Kevin Uliassi will make his second
attempt to become the first person to fly a balloon nonstop around the Earth.
Balloon Life recently spoke with Kevin by phone from his home in
Phoenix.by Tom Hamilton
Kevin Uliassi will make his second
attempt to become the first person to fly a balloon nonstop around the Earth.
Balloon Life recently spoke with Kevin by phone from his home in
Phoenix.
He is ready and all the equipment is in place at the rock quarry in Rockford, Illinois. Kevin has managed to find some more sponsorship dollars and "juggle the credit cards" to raise the money for another try.
Uliassi's (pronounced oo-lee-OSS-ee) first around-the-world attempt ended in a snow-covered cornfield near Knox, Indiana, last New Year's Eve, when he landed his 140-foot-tall balloon after a three-hour flight. Floodlights from a State Police helicopter helped guide Uliassi to an emergency landing after the giant balloon's helium gas cell burst when its vents failed to function properly.
The flight communications center will be in Chicago, at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Uliassi's alma mater. Others supporting the flight include PageNet, a Dallas, Texas, paging and wireless messaging service, Lamcotec, Inc., of Monson, Massachusetts, which developed the special coating for the balloon envelope and La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries, in Hammond, Indiana.
The new balloon will again be a hot air/gas hybrid with an envelope composed of two sealed nylon compartments. The spherical upper compartment, or gas cell, will hold some 420,000 cubic feet of helium. The cell fits tightly atop the lower compartment, a cone filled with about 100,000 cubic feet of air heated by a propane burner.
The balloon will carry the same unpressurized capsule that Uliassi rode in last year. It consists essentially of a small, closet-like compartment with insulated walls designed to shield the pilot from the minus 50-degree Fahrenheit temperatures he is apt to see at the balloon's cruising altitude of about 30,000 feet. Oxygen and propane tanks hang outside the capsule, which is attached to the envelope via a standard hot air balloon burner frame.
Uliassi says fitting his 6-foot-3-inch, 195-pound frame into the snug compartment filled with water bottles, pre-packaged food, batteries and instrumentation "will be like living in an ice chest for two weeks." He will wear an oxygen mask above 12,000 feet, a minimum altitude that the balloon is expected to see only rarely in the circumnavigation attempt. An autopilot designed and built by Bruce Comstock will fly the balloon while he sleeps, sounding an alarm should a problem develop.
Kevin readily admits that flying solo creates an extra burden. "It's an extra challenge, particularly in an unpressurized capsule." But Uliassi likes his chances. "There's going to be a successful solo flight sooner or later," he says, "even if one of the two or three-man crews gets around first."
Uliassi is going to extra lengths
to combat the fatigue and confused decision-making that can result from
long solo flights at high altitudes. He is being advised by Dr. Peter Hackett,
a physician, mountain climber and expert on high-altitude physiology.
Uliassi will sleep in a special low-pressure chamber in the final weeks before launch to increase the ability of his blood to carry oxygen. His training was delayed some in November by a virus. In fact, it was the infection that caused him to pass up a weather system that looked promising.
Meteorology for the flight will be provided by George Dunnavan of Bob Rice's Weather Window, Wolfeboro, New Hamsphire, assisted by Rhett Grumman. Dunnavan was a meteorologist for the recent global flight attempt by Steve Fossett.
If Uliassi has any advantage in his flight, he figures it is his intimate knowledge of every aspect of his balloon's design and performance. He designed the super-light capsule, made of tough space-age materials; drew up the specifications for the envelope and had it coated to his own special requirements; and did all the lift and heat transfer calculations that determine how much fuel, oxygen and equipment the weight-limited balloon can afford to carry.
Redesign of the new envelope has received Uliassi's particular attention. "The gas cell in the first balloon simply blew apart because the two large tubes that automatically release helium to adjust cell pressure as the balloon rises failed to operate correctly," Uliassi says. "Design of the envelope was again delegated to Cameron Balloons, Ltd. (Bristol, England), but this year we took an active role with Cameron's engineers in redesign of the gas cell, and I have confidence that it will vent properly."
Uliassi believes the J. Renee, named for his wife, meets all the requirements for global flight. "We will carry enough fuel, oxygen, and supplies for a flight of 20 days," he says. "That's more than enough time to circle the globe."
