Sure, thanks for posting this great story.

I’ve been searching all my archives for an article I saved about Steve Fossett’s unsuccessful attempt to balloon solo around the world. I copied the file from hard drive to hard drive for years but couldn’t find it in any of my e-mail accounts or cloud drives. Finally it turned up ten levels deep in an old webserver backup.

It’s too long to fit in a comment, but maybe someone can find a copy online or I’ll find a way to post it somewhere.

I'm going to have to do some debriefing as to what really

happened. I was flying at an altitude above the thunderstorm

line, which was clearing the tops of the thunderstorm. But I

suspect there was some interaction with the tops of the

thunderstorm and the jet stream where I was flying, which

was at 29,000 feet, and I started a descent. At first the

descent was at 500 feet a minute, and then I reversed it by

turning on the burners and climbing back up. But then I was

already under the influence of the thunderstorm and started a

descent of 1,500 feet a minute. I used the burners more and I

flew back up at an extreme rate of 1,500 feet a minute. And I

believe at that point the balloon ruptured. So I started a

descent, and I don't know how fast the descent was because

my variometer has a maximum rate on it of 2,500 feet a

minute and it was pegged at 2,500 feet a minute for my entire

descent down from 29,000 feet to the surface.