Balloonist: I Almost Died
American adventurer Steve Fossett was a little wiser when he stepped onto solid ground for the first time Thursday since the plunge into the sea that ended his fourth attempt to fly a balloon around the world.
And for now, Fossett is content to leave the field to his competitors, reports CBS News Senior European Correspondent Tom Fenton. Five or six other teams will try to make the first nonstop balloon flight around the world
"The consequences in this around-the-world ballooning are so severe," he told a news conference soon after returning to shore. "I'm not sure I should keep doing it every year, taking this risk."
The 54-year-old Chicago millionaire called the experience a sobering one. Despite having run marathons, climbed mountains, and raced dog sleds in Alaska, he says this was the closest he came to being killed.
Fossett is one of a handful of people who for years have been trying to become the first to go around the world in a balloon. Others include the British millionaire Richard Branson.
Fossett's dramatic plunge into the Coral Sea on Monday ended the attempt that so far has come closest. He traveled two-thirds of the Earth's circumference before becoming caught in a severe storm that ruptured his balloon and sent him plummeting from a height of almost 29,000 feet within 10 minutes.
Frantic in the cramped capsule in which he had spent almost two weeks since takeoff, Fossett on Thursday said his reaction when he began his rapid descent was to say out loud: "I am going to die."
"But I figured I would keep working on the problem, and did. All the way down," he said.
This included firing all the balloon's burners, causing them to melt part of the canopy and going outside the protective capsule during a severe buffeting and "just sheets of hail" to cut free fuel and oxygen tanks which were weighing down the balloon.
He estimated the impact at a speed of 2,500 feet per minute should have been endurable. Then Fosset blacked out. His next memory was "waking up with the capsule upside down, half full of water, and on fire."
Fossett scrambled into a life raft and set off emergency beacons. Within hours, a French military plane had found him in reef-strewn and shark-infested waters about 500 miles off Australia's east coast.
Early Tuesday, the crew of the Australian yacht Atlanta negotiated reefs uncharted since the 1860s, picked him up, and gave him a good meal. He was later transferred to the New Zealand navy tanker Endeavour, which delivered him Thursday to Townsville, Australia.
Fossett set out from Mendoza, Argentina, on Aug. 7. He traveled more than 15,200 miles before the crash.
Fossett's first attempt to circle Earth lasted just 36 hours, cut short in January 1996 by winter storms. A year later, he set the balloon distance record: a 10,361-mile journey from St. Louis, Missouri, to Sultanpar, India. He rn short of fuel while awaiting Libyan clearance.
He took off from St. Louis on his third attempt this past New Year's Eve. Five days later, he landed 5,802 miles away in a wheat field in southern Russia.