Around the World in 20 Days

In the novel Around the World in Eighty Days, Phileas Fogg employed all manner of transport--steamers, railways, yachts, carriages, trading vessels, sledges and even elephants. But no balloon. It was Hollywood, not Jules Verne, that sent the intrepid Brit off in that aircraft. Trivia, you say? But there was nothing trivial about the real-life fulfillment of what seemed to be quixotic fantasy last week in Northern Africa. In a 180-ft.-high balloon, a silvery dare in the air, two adventurers--Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, 41, and British balloon instructor Brian Jones, 51--completed their tour of the world in 20 days. The stakes were different (a purse of $1 million, courtesy of Anheuser-Busch, as opposed to 20,000[pounds] in Verne), but their intent was the same. They sought to prove a point--to themselves and the world.

The Breitling Orbiter 3 crossed the finish line (9.27[degrees] west longitude) over Mauritania last Saturday. Piccard was ecstatic: "I am with the angels and just completely happy," he said over satellite relay. Jones, for his part, said calmly, "I am going to have a cup of tea, like any good Englishman." They had sailed into history. And they decided to sail on a little more. "We do not land. We go to Egypt," Piccard radioed air-traffic control in Senegal. "We are a balloon flying around the world." "I will be tearing their eyes out when I see them," their erstwhile rival Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic, told TIME. "But apart from that, I think a hug and a bottle of champagne will be appropriate."

Since 1981 there have been nearly 20 attempts to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon. Steve Fossett, a Chicago millionaire who attempted the feat five times, plunged into the Coral Sea after traveling 14,236 miles last August. And on Christmas Day he went down again near the coast of Hawaii, taking along his partners, Per Lindstrand of Sweden and Branson. The U.S. Coast Guard fished them out at a cost--to taxpayers--of about $130,000. Setting the elusive record was worth the trouble to Fossett. "I can't tell you how it ranks with the others, like climbing Mount Everest or making the first transatlantic airplane flight," said Fossett. "But it's one of the great explorations."

It's tough for pioneers to make a name for themselves these days. Both poles have been reached, the Atlantic has been crossed and recrossed, and the eagle has landed. So why not do it in a balloon? Well, what can you say about a pastime whose first passengers were, in an experiment by the French Montgolfier brothers in 1783, a duck, a rooster and a sheep? No wonder Piccard has a complex. "The way the public sees it is this," he explained before lift-off. "If we don't leave, we are idiots. If we do leave but don't succeed in our mission, we are incompetent. But if we do succeed, it's because it was easy and anyone could have done it."

But you see, the psychiatrist has a legacy to uphold: his grandfather Auguste was the first to reach the stratosphere in a balloon, and his father Jacques dove to the deepest point of the ocean in a bathyscaphe. "Bertrand believes it is his destiny to fly a balloon around the world," said his rival Andy Elson, as the Orbiter 3 pushed the world record further and further.

Brian Jones was the Mr. Fix-It of the expedition. He was quietly overseeing the construction of the gondola for Cameron Balloons when he was nominated to be a reserve pilot in the Breitling attempt. "Of course, reserves in any activity assume they will always remain reserves," he says. But he found himself, as he puts it, "in the hot seat" when Piccard had a falling out with his first co-pilot, Tony Brown. "He's not an adventurer," says Joanna Jones of her husband. "He's a professional pilot who approaches things in a judged manner." Jones quickly fell into a comfortable rhythm with his copilot. Brian "made me a cup of tea while I was preparing his bed," said Piccard.

As pioneering craft go, the Breitling Orbiter 3 outclasses the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria--and the Spirit of St. Louis, for that matter. It is a high-tech combination of hot air and gas, equipped not only with simple necessities like a bunk, toilet and desks but also with a fax machine and satellite telephones. The journey began on March 1, Piccard's birthday, in the snowcapped mountains of Chateau-d'Oex, Switzerland. Piccard and Jones cruised toward Italy at an altitude of 21,000 ft., crossed over the Mediterranean at night and enjoyed a meal of emu. On a satellite phone, Jones chatted with his wife, who spent most of her time at mission control at Geneva's Cointrin Airport, which was manned around the clock by a meteorologist and an air-traffic controller. Piccard's wife Michele preferred to stay at home with their three daughters.

The pilots headed toward Morocco, over Mauritania and then turned northeast to catch a jet stream blowing toward India. In theory, balloons can't be steered, but pilots improvise by dropping up and down between different altitudes in search of the right wind pattern. Like surfers trying to catch a wave, balloonists try to ride jet streams, high-altitude currents that usually move from west to east. "It's magical what pilots can achieve," says balloonmaker Don Cameron. "In competitions with hot-air balloons, they'll set a target 10 miles away and ask pilots to drop a marker on it, and the pilots will get within a meter of it." The Orbiter 3 crew hit its target on the fourth day of the journey and sped along in a jet stream at 60 m.p.h. They ventured outside the cabin once, when the balloon descended to 10,000 ft., so that Piccard could chip away at ice that had formed on the cables and the capsule. There were few surprises, and the only irritant was a mysterious buzzing in the cabin. On Day 5, Piccard located--and dispatched--its source: a stowaway mosquito.