August 18 1998 10:00 CDT (August 18 15:00 UTC)
Transcript of Fossett Press Conference -- August 17, 1998
Mark Wrighton: You've had a great and successful mission.
I'm joined here by members of the media, with your
Mission Control director Alan Blount. So good to have
you back on Earth.
Steve Fossett: Well, frankly Mark, it's good to be alive.
MW: Well, we were all very worried about you yesterday,
I can assure you of that. It was a harrowing
experience for you as you've given an account of it.
I'm sure people here would like to hear first-hand from you.
SF: OK, I'd be glad to do that.
Judy Jasper: Go ahead, Steve.
SF: OK, so I had left Australia and flying at 29,000 feet.
And we felt that was high enough to clear and go over
the top of the thunderstorm. And somewhere around, well,
the middle of the night, I started a decent at only 500
feet a minute. But apparently, I was pulled down. I looked
outside and I was still above the clouds but I was
pulled into the thunderstorm, and then the hail that was
being thrown off the top of the thunderstorm cooled off the
balloon and I started a 1,000 feet a minute descent. I
turned on the burners to try to reverse that and the balloon
started going up 1,000 feet a minute. And then I was solidly
in the thunderstorm and started the up and down draft
motion, going down at 1,500 feet a minute and then up at
1,500 feet a minute. At that point, I believe the balloon
ruptured on the ascent because it's only designed to take
about a 1,000 feet a minute. So then I started a descent,
and my bariometer maxes out at 2,500 feet a minute and it
was pegged at the maximum going down more than
2,500 feet a minute descent all the way. So then I turned
on the burners full blast to try to -- even though I had a
ruptured balloon -- there's some hope of slowing it down
with a lot of hot air. And as I was going through the
thunderstorm the balloon was just being thrown from one
side to another. It was visibly tearing and tremendous
amounts of hail -- the hail would just come in just huge
sheets and cover me. And I looked around and looked
again at the bariometer and saw that I was still descending
in excess of 2,500 feet a minute and I said out loud,
"I'm going to die." So I decided to keep on working and
keep the burners going, and then when I got to only
1,000 feet off the ground I cut away a lot of tanks hoping
that would give the balloon some lift and soften the
impact. And then I laid down on the bench in the capsule
for the impact. And happily, the impact wasn't too bad. I
had no injury whatsoever from the impact, even though I was
apparently in excess of what was believed to be
survivable in a balloon. And I think that's probably because
not only laying on my back, but also the capsule
absorbed the impact in the water. The capsule immediately
turned upside down and started filling with water. And
since the burners were still going full blast, that started
a fire with the propane tanks and started to burn the capsule
from the outside, and the capsule was being filled with fumes
from the resins, fumes and smoke. And it was half full
of water. I managed to get my EPIRB, which is a satellite
locator beacon, and a life raft, and then dove out of the
capsule -- which then the hatch was below me - dove out of
the capsule with EPIRB and life raft in hand. So,
once I got out of the capsule with those two items, I had
known that I would live.
MW: Steve, that's just an incredible account. I don't know
how you can remember all those details, but you're an
extraordinary person. We are really fortunate to hear
first hand from you, and we're so grateful for your safety.
Alan Blount is here with us. He's been director of Mission
Control. A lot of people, Steve, have been working
very hard on your behalf -- both in the Washington
University community and your Mission Control team. I
thought I'd give Alan an opportunity to speak with you
here, and then perhaps to invite the media to ask questions.
Alan Blount: Steve, as I said earlier, we're just absolutely
delighted to hear that you're OK. We were very
concerned about you all day, and as you probably understand
it was many many hours before we had any detail.
All we could do, and all the press could do and anybody
else could do, was just guess and conjecture at what
your condition was.
SF: Well, I think at first my first reaction when I realized
the balloon was tearing was what a disappointment this is
that I was probably closer to success at that point than --
well, we really expected to be successful. And then, my
first realization was that this was such a good shot at
this and that my team -- many of them had been working on
this full time for the past month and some had been working
all since January -- that there is a huge amount of
commitment by the team, so this is a disappointment all
the way around. And then you just have to be thankful for
what you do have and I realized that, well, forget about
the disappointment of the mission failing, it was time to
worry about surviving.
JJ: Well, Steve, we know you went into the raft with only
your EPIRB. What has happened to you since then and
what was the rescue like?
SF: At first I tried to hang on to the balloon to maintain
contact with it so, hopefully, I could get back into the
capsule when the fires would die down. I did that for about
an hour while some of the tanks were exploding. But,
it was quite a storm and so the balloon was being blown
around. I was having a hard time holding on to it. And
then, twice the balloon came down on top of me -- I was
in the raft. I was being suffocated by all the fumes and
having this heavy balloon on top of me, so I got out and,
unfortunately, I didn't have any line and I lost contact with
the balloon envelope. Floated the rest of that night until,
oh, probably 9 o'clock in the morning time, and then the
French -- because see, I was in French rescue territory
associated with New Caledonia -- the French came by in
a jet search and rescue airplane and dropped a life raft
to me. So then I was protected from there on as far as
from the cold and the elements. Then, the Australian
rescue forces came out and maintained a watch until a boat
could get to me -- middle of the night. So, this was 24
hours after the crash when a schooner named Atlanta
picked me up with its crew of 4 sailors, who were doing an
around the world sailing trip. I spent last night, then, on
this boat, Atlanta, and then this morning, I was transferred
onto the New Zealand ship Endeavor, which is where
I'm calling you from now.
JJ: Steve, we'll go ahead and take questions from the media
and I'll repeat them to you so you can hear.
SF: OK.
JJ: The question is how do you maintain your calm and your
wits about you coming down like that so you can
think clearly and you can try to save yourself?
SF: Well, it's a lot of pressure, and if you don't already
know by experience what to do and by prior knowledge
-- if it isn't ingrained into you -- you won't be able to
figure it out in that type of extreme situation. So, I think
I've been trained well in balloons. I've had a lot of time
in this type of balloon -- Rosiere balloons -- and so, I think
I made the correct decisions when I was coming down. Without
very much experience I never would have had a chance to make
those correct decisions.
JJ: What is the key to your survival?
SF: Well, I've realized from my sailboat racing and ballooning
that the key is the satellite EPIRB. You must be
able to take that with you when you abandon ship -- whether
it's this balloon or whether it's a boat -- because
that's the only way of putting out a beacon telling the
rescue services where you are. They can't find you otherwise.
So, the key to the success was getting out of the balloon with
the EPIRB and also the small 12 pound life raft that I
had, so that I was able to not suffer from exposure during
that first night.
JJ: Steve, when did you activate the EPIRB? Did it activate itself?
SF: Well, they come both ways. This one is a manually activated
EPIRB, and so I turned it on as soon as I was --
I turned it on during my descent and I had it on a test
mode. Apparently, it did send out an initial beacon, but it
didn't continue when it was in test mode. And then when it
got daylight -- see, I had no head lamp or anything, I
couldn't see exactly what the settings were on the EPIRB --
when it got daylight, then I turned it to the proper
on-transmit position and transmitted continuously until the
French rescue plane dropped a raft to me.
AB: Steve, I have a question. Do you know what time it was that
you started to descend and what time you hit the water?
SF: No, I don't. I think perhaps you have my latest automatic
position report. I think that's as close as we can get,
is the latest report you got in Mission Control.
AB: Unfortunately, we were about 2 minutes away from the
hourly downloads so that entire last 58 minutes or an
hour is not available.
SF: But you had one from the previous hour, is that correct?
AB: Yes, we did from the previous hour. It doesn't show
anything unusual. I don't know if there's any way to
retrieve the information from the Aerobot science package
in the capsule. You might have Atlanta look into that, if
there's anything they can bring from the Aerobot. I think
that that's a possibility. You might also be interested in
knowing that there is a scientist from Florida who e-mailed
us a photograph that he had taken of that storm. He
specializes in photographing lightening strikes. That storm
that we thought was so benign as you approached it had
10,000 lightening strikes that night.
SF: The crew of Atlanta told me that it was a real fireworks
show that night and so that was quite a surprise to us.
We didn't expect anything nearly that severe a storm.
JJ: The question is what kind of damage has been done to the
capsule, and what do you plan to do with it?
SF: The capsule is a partly burned after the crash...
(Phone contact with Steve is lost. Press conference continues
with Alan Blount.)
AB: ... three computers which, if they're full of salt water
now, they're ruined I'm sure. There were some cameras
that were placed on by a documentary company, and they are
going to try and retrieve the film from that as I
understand. But this was film that was taken of him inside
the capsule during the flight.
Reporter: As he was going down?
AB: Possibly, yeah. And there's some thought that some of
that film, even though it might be wet, should be
salvageable. And then there's the burner and so forth, which
has some value. He has a parachute there. I don't
know if -- you know a lot of the stuff when it gets wet,
it's probably not worth a whole lot. But I'm sure they're
going to save everything that they can and go from there.
Reporter: Will they sink the capsule?
AB: That was the impression I got, yes.
Reporter: What are his plans now, once he reaches Townsville?
AB: He plans to be in route to Townsville for 2 1/2 days.
After reaching Townsville, he plans to go to Sydney.
And then after Sydney, I don't know. He didn't tell me.
Reporter: Mission Control alerted him to the storm. How
instrumental was that?
AB: We knew the storm was there. It was a slow moving storm,
but there wasn't a great deal we could do about
it. The impression that we had -- and Bob Rice and I had,
and Bob Rice and my brother, who preceded me, had
some conversation about it -- and the indication was that
at 29,000 feet he shouldn't have had any problem
climbing and getting over the storm. He was fairly
close to his pressure ceiling, which means that there
wasn't a whole lot further that the balloon could go without
a serious penalty in helium and the possibility of rupturing
with going too high, too fast, anyway. So there was a limit
on how much we could do. He was tracking towards the
north end of the storm, and from the looks of what we'd
seen on the satellite photographs, he really just got into
the very very edge of the north end of the storm anyway.
So a few miles further north and he probably would have
missed it, based on what we could tell. Any other
questions that I could handle?
Reporter: Did he say whether or not he's going to do this again?
AB: He did not say. I did hear one report earlier that he
wasn't even discussing that at this point, and my
experience with him is that he'll spend some time to think
it over and make a decision.
Reporter: Did you learn anything new from his comments tonight?
AB: Oh, I learned a great deal new, yeah. It's not too
many pilots who go through the center of a thunderstorm
and can tell what the experience is like in any kind of
an aircraft.
Reporter: Was that the best route to take do you think,
in the southern hemisphere?
AB: Through a thunderstorm? (laughter) Yes, yes, it is
the best route that I've seen so far in respect to
thunderstorms. There are thunderstorms in the northern
hemisphere just as easily [as] in the southern hemisphere,
so that's not different. Last January he encountered a
thunderstorm, and when he approached that thunderstorm it
was off the south coast of Ireland and then throughout
Europe. We were advised by the meteorologist at the time
that the storm was up near his height, that he could expect
to go through cloud and that, at that time, there was the
possibility of embedded thunderstorms in the cloud, which
is a very similar situation to what we had here. He was
lucky that time. Fortunately, this time he was over water.
He wasn't over water part of that trip.
Reporter: Would you characterize his survival then as miraculous?
AB: I think you can categorically say that anybody who flies
or is in the middle of a thunderstorm and comes out
the other end alive is miraculous.
JJ: I think we have a satellite problem. I'm sorry. Are there
any more questions for Alan? (pause) I'd like to thank
you all for your patience, and for following this story.
Thank you to those of you on the bridge. It is our plan to
close the media center shortly. Hereafter, we will continue
to post bulletins on the hotline and the web page as
things come up. If you'd like to schedule an interview
with Mr. Fossett or whatever, I'll be talking to him about
what his plans are -,ward to visiting with you soon, where
he's going to be, where he might hold a press
conference and what the situation is. We haven't had any
conversations about that yet. So thank you all very very
much.
(Phone contact with Steve is restored.)
AB: Steve, Buddy is here and he's been in touch with Joe.
Joe has made arrangements to salvage the capsule if
you are interested. If so, we'll give him your phone
number and have him call you tonight. Is that something you
want to pursue?
SF: We have a salvage operation underway right now, where
the schooner Atlanta is going to go out and they're
going to retrieve certain things like a briefcase, cameras
and film out of the capsule. The rest of the capsule is
destroyed, and so they'll scuttle the capsule and they'll
pick up the balloon and the fuel tanks -- just to get them out
of the water so that they'll not be floating around -- and
get those back to Australia for disposal.
JJ: Steve, how are you feeling and what did the doctor say?
SF: Actually, there's nothing wrong with my health at all.
So, I'm just feeling perfectly normal.
JJ: How are your burns?
SF: There's still a little bit. You can still see the
leftover burns, one on my wrist and one on my nose. They're
very small, just half inch burns each one of them.
JJ: Here's the classic question. Are you going to try this again?
SF: Well, in any event I would not be able to get ready for
the winter season in the northern hemisphere, which is
December and January, because I've had a total loss of
equipment and it would not be possible to be ready. I
have some serious questions whether I should keep on trying.
See, each attempt represents a risk, and you just
can't go out and expose yourself to those risks over and
over again. I may never try again, or I may wait and see
how the other teams do for a year and then consider it.
But no, I will not be going this winter season. I will be
watching the other competitors.
AB: You are about to, at some time tonight, have a call,
I think, from Richard Branson, so I'm sure he'll be
interested in that answer.
JJ: And Alan Noble has tried, and he's been calling daily
to check on your welfare. He was very concerned. Are
there more questions?
SF: Oh, that's really nice.
AB: Baron Hilton also called with concern. He was very concerned
about you also, Steve.
SF: OK, great.
JJ: Basically, the question is your competitive spirit,
and if the other teams went if your competitive spirit would
encourage you to do so also.
SF: Well, of course I'm very competitive, but this is not
the only form of competition. I'm more likely to turn this
over to the competitors and let them take their best shot
at it, and just myself continue in sailboat racing for my
competitive objectives.
JJ: Was this the most serious risk you've faced, and was
it the most dangerous situation in ballooning or any other
sport you've faced?
SF: Yeah, this was the closest to being killed ever in my life.
JJ: Has that changed your perspective?
SF: It highlights the danger of ballooning. There are
certain things that we're able to prepare for. For instance,
doing an ocean landing, just a normal ocean landing, as I've
described satellite beacons, all of this is presumably
survivable but high risk. But having the balloon rupture
is not something we're prepared for, and especially in a
thunderstorm, so I would say this is outside the bounds
of anything we can possibly control. And the only way to
avoid exposure to that is either fly at much higher altitude
in a pressurized capsule or not fly at all.
JJ: If you never try again, is the distance record enough
of an achievement?
SF: Well, I'm rather proud of setting a new distance record,
and we did some other things on this flight. It was the
first crossing of the Southern Atlantic and the first
crossing, and I might predict the last crossing, by balloon
of the Indian Ocean. I think we will be able to look back
on this flight as being a successful flight in so far as
it did set some fine records.
JJ: What did your wife have to say when you talked to her?
SF: Oh, she was just very glad that I'm well and wanted to
know what she could do to help figure out how I'm
going to get home.
JJ: Do you have anything special you want to do once you get home?
SF: I'd like to sit back and smell the roses and live a life
like a normal person for a while.
MW: Well Steve, this is Mark Wrighton again. All of us at
Washington University are extremely proud of you.
You should be very proud of Alan Blount and those responsible
for your mission. It has been extraordinarily
successful. We're very grateful that you're back safe,
and I'll look forward to visiting with you soon to help you
enjoy some of the finer aspects of life. Congratulations
on a great mission.
SF: Thank you.
JJ: Thank you Steve, and I'll talk to you soon.
SF: OK, very good. Bye.
August 21 1998 15:00 CDT (20:00 UTC) Transcript of Steve Fossett Press Conference on board the Endeavour when it docked in Townsville, Queensland, Australia Thursday, August 20. Estimated time 7:30 p.m. Note: Tape is courtesy of The 7 Network, Australia. Reporters' questions are not audible and therefore were not transcribed. This will be available on the Solo Spirit homepage at http://solospirit.wustl.edu. Steve Fossett: Well, I wanted to tell you how grateful I am for the rescue services. I needed to be rescued and they really came to my aid. It started -- well, the first thing what I needed to do was, this is a satellite EPIRB, satellite beacon, that gives my location when I turn this on. This allowed rescue services to know where I was. At morning light a French guardian coming down from an airplane came down from New Caledonia, and dropped a life raft to me, and that protected me from the elements. After that, the Royal Australian Air Force came over flying a Hercules and continued to drop water and rations to me, and also maintained watch of my position until I could be rescued from the water. After the Hercules had flown for seven hours over me, then the -- also from the Australian Air Force -- the (name of airplane - can't understand it) flew over me until I was finally taken from the water by a private yacht, the Atlanta, that was on an around the world cruise. After spending that night on Atlanta, then I was transferred to the New Zealand war ship Endeavour, and was brought here to port. And I think, I think this was an excellent example of a very successful rescue operation, and I was obviously very delighted that it was done successfully. My life was at stake. I hope everyone is very pleased with how well the rescue services have worked by France, New Zealand and Australia. 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. So in order to try to slow this descent I turned on the burners full blast, and then I had some auxiliary high power burners which I also turned on. And still I was descending at this rate and I was in a thunderstorm and the balloon was being buffeted very heavily back and forth. The burners were melting the edge of the balloon and it was dripping polyester on me and ropes were burning, and meanwhile there were just sheets of hail in the middle of the thunderstorm, sweeping over me. At that point, I actually said out loud that, "I'm going to die," because I couldn't arrest this descent rate. When I got down to the final 2,000 feet of the descent I cut away a large number of the tanks to lighten the load of the balloon. Then I laid down on the bench inside my capsule to take the impact on my back. But it was still reading over 2,500 feet a minute when I hit the water. I believe that when I hit the water I probably was just briefly knocked unconscious and I awakened with the capsule half fill of water, capsized. So I needed to scramble out of the capsule and I took two things with me -- I took my small life raft and the EPIRB and swam out the bottom of the capsule, and tried to stay with the balloon after that. The balloon was blowing around, and I lost contact with it and just floated in my life raft that night. (Inaudible question from reporter). Steve Fossett: No, I didn't have a chance to turn on the capsule's [cameras] when this was going on so there's no pictures of the descent itself. (Inaudible question from reporter) Steve Fossett: I haven't decided that but I have suffered a total loss of equipment and would not be able to be prepared for this coming season, which is the December and January season in the northern hemisphere. So I'm out of the picture for the time being in the around-the-world competition. (Inaudible question from reporter) Steve Fossett: As far as the salvage of the balloon is concerned, I did charter an airplane to fly out to locate the balloon the first day after I was there. The airplane failed to find it, and I believe an airplane went again yesterday. We would like to salvage the equipment, not only to get it out of the water, but also because there's film inside the capsule and some personal effects. (Inaudible question from reporter) Steve Fossett: Well, it leaves an open field for the competitors. Richard Branson is one of the competitors. There may be as many as six teams flying in the December-January period. I think we're getting very close to success in this around-the-world balloon endeavor, so I think there's a good chance that one of them will succeed this year, and I won't be in a position to compete with them. (Inaudible question from reporter) Steve Fossett: Well, this is very frustrating. First, this flight was intended to be successful. It was an all out effort by my team, and by myself. We took this on with the full expectation of being successful this time, and now I didn't make it around. It is very frustrating to find -- I believe I do have the best team. I have made the four longest flights in the history of