Steve Fossett's after the last flying record there is

Anyway, I guess there was one record left and he's after it now:

US aviator Steve Fossett has taken off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in an attempt to make the longest non-stop flight in his Virgin GlobalFlyer plane.

His journey will take him around the world once and across the Atlantic twice, landing in Kent, UK.

...He will aim to break by 1,126 km (700 miles) the non-stop distance record set in 1986 by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager in a nine-day flight.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6978818.stm

A plane flown by record-breaking US adventurer Steve Fossett is missing in the Nevada desert, US federal aviation officials have said.

Mr Fossett was reportedly last seen taking off from the private airfield at the Flying M Ranch near Yerington, Nevada, on Monday evening.

He was flying a blue and white single-engine Citabria plane.

A Civil Air Patrol spokeswoman, Major Cynthia Ryan, said 13 planes were searching for the 63-year-old.

I think he fulfilled Autumn Almanac's prediction, then.

I also admit, having started this thread, that I was wondering "What the hell does Steve Forbert have to do with flying records?"

his records flew off the shelves

^^^ all time best joke on ILX ever

Way to get our hopes up, Google News.

http://i4.tinypic.com/6d0hkdj.jpg

(j/k, I have nothing against Mr. Virgin)

3 days he's been missing now and the search could take 2 weeks. Not looking good at all.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6981155.stm

guy's dead.

too bad, I kinda like crazy daredevil billionaires

must credit shakey

Aw, if only Colbert was with him in the desert to throw some water on his sandy, sweaty head.

who thinks the dude is at Area 51?

the truth is out there gabbneb

Bad riddance :-(

http://adventurebooks.newsvine.com/_news/2007/09/05/941721-where-in-the-heck-is-steve-fossett-background-theories-and-images

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/09/fossett

aliens got him obviously

fuck I bet Coast to Coast has been all over this story with kerrazy theories, but I haven't been listening

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread300772/pg1

http://fe17.news.mud.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070905/ap_on_re_us/steve_fossett

who thinks the dude is at Area 51?

I don't want to attack Fossett yet, but when pilots treat flying as something akin to hopping in the car there's a greater chance of something bad happening. John Denver to thread.

"yet"? why wait?

Don't misunderestimate the resourcefulness of rich people. Did you see that movie with Alec Baldwin and the grizzy bear?

John Denver is fucked up kinda bad right now. I've been poking him with a stick for a while and he's not singing.

RIP

"yet"? why wait?

Because we simply don't know what happened. The engine could have conked out, metal fatigue, or anything other than pilot error, but you gotta wonder.

This reminds me a lot of the disappearance of Jim Gray back in January. He still hasn't been found yet either.

He could've had a heart attack. You never know.

Wait I totally think I see his downed plane on Google Earth

http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070904/NEWS18/70904016

http://thestrippodcast.blogspot.com/

http://www.recordcourier.com/article/20070906/NEWS/70906004

good riddance

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, September 6, 2007 6:48 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

so ok, sudden wind or heart attack/stroke and soft landing or bad/sheltered locator device are most likely. and these are all easily explainable, but it still seems suggestive that the dude carries 2 weeks of food and water, doesn't tell anyone where he's going, and heads SE when the lake bed he had applied for was ENE.

"He also has a submarine project. He wants to dive deeper than anyone has ever gone," Herd said.

http://www.tahoebonanza.com/article/20070907/Nevada/109070036

not that i believe any of this, but it's fun - http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread300230/pg1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Manly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lahontan
http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2005/06/10/news/devilshole.html
http://publicaffairs.unlv.ath.cx/articles/Daily%20Clips/11-26-2005.Does%20the%20river%20run%20through%20here%20(LV%20Sun).PDF
http://faultline.org/index.php/site/comments/the_river_of_gold/

Connected Basin Flow Systems
Although most flow systems are confined to one or two basins in the Basin and Range area, several basins are linked together in an extended ground-water flow system in places (fig. 60). In the majority of the basins, flow passes through the basin-fill sediments that cover the valley floors, as in the Humbolt system. However, where carbonate rocks underlie the basins, data indicate that some basins are hydrologically linked by the carbonate rocks and that large quantities of ground water flow through them and discharge through the overlying basin-fill sediments to large springs. Because few wells are drilled into the carbonate rocks, data are scarce and several assumptions have been made to account for flow in these rocks. One assumption is that the carbonate rocks and the basin-fill deposits form a single hydrologic unit. At locations where wells have been drilled in both rock types, the water levels in each aquifer have been similar. Another piece of evidence that the two rock types act as one hydrologic unit comes from the Ash Meadows area in southern Nevada. Irrigation wells in that area that withdrew water from the basin-fill deposits drew down water levels in the carbonate-rock aquifers more than 1 foot from 1969 to 1972.

Thick sequences of carbonate rocks underlie most of the alluvial basins within the Basin and Range area in eastern Nevada and southeastern California (fig. 60); these rocks also extend into western Utah, northwestern Arizona, and southeastern Idaho. The carbonate rocks have been faulted, deformed, and eroded through geologic time; original thicknesses of up to 40,000 feet have been reduced by one-half or more. Consequently, most of these rocks are in isolated blocks that form individual aquifers with areal dimensions of only a few square miles. In Nevada, however, the carbonate rocks form a north-south section of aquifer, or "central corridor" (fig. 61), that is generally laterally continuous for more than 250 miles. The southern part of this corridor has been most studied, and two major flow systems have been identified. In both flow systems, ground water is recharged in east-central Nevada. In one system, ground water discharges at Ash Meadows and Death Valley and, in the other, primarily at Muddy River Springs (fig. 61).

http://capp.water.usgs.gov/gwa/ch_b/B-text2.html

I don't want to attack Fossett yet, but when pilots treat flying as something akin to hopping in the car there's a greater chance of something bad happening. John Denver to thread.

-- Elvis Telecom, Thursday, September 6, 2007 11:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

i thought driving's more dangerous than flying supposedly

i thought driving's more dangerous than flying supposedly

Flying as a passenger on a major air carrier, yes. Flying your own plane, no.

Google Earch and Amazon/Mechanical Turk ask for help in finding him:

http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=9TSZK4G35XEZJZG21T60&kw=Flash

(download google earth & compare satellite images from before and after his disappearance) (also: spread the word, plz)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070926/ap_on_re_us/steve_fossett

Declared legally dead

Found?

BREAKING NEWS ABOUT AVIATOR STEVE FOSSETT

The call came last night. A story from a friend about a ski shop owner hiking in the mountains off trail above Mammoth Lakes California near the area of Minaret Lake and Minaret Mine. Apparently the man came across what appeared to be some papers lying in a remote path, but what he may have found wasn’t some wayward trash left by a careless camper.

Tattered and crumpled on the ground, the Mammoth Lakes local found what appears to be two FAA cards that listed the name Steve Fossett, both were apparently either issued or had some sort of connection to the State of Illinois. The two cards were found with a small amount of money and not far away, a sweat jacket, also a bit worn and beaten up from the weather.

The Mammoth man went and told his wife, who happens to be a local firefighter, and then the couple and a few close friends searched the area all yesterday afternoon, after the find and then got back into range and called local authorities, who then contacted the lawyers involved in this case. Will this find lead to a lost crash site of the missing millionaire aviator? More information about a possible renewed search effort to come. I did speak with a police sergeant in Mammoth Lakes and he confirms that the items have just been brought to the station and they are looking very closely at the papers and will be getting back to us shortly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret_Summit

a little confusing - one report said the items were found around here^; most say it was around Minaret Lake, which is to the West. and articles say the areas around the Minarets (immediately to the West of the lake) and Mammoth Mountain (to the East, and South of Minaret Summit) will be searched. Minaret Summit isn't far from a ski area and there seems to be a ranger station in the area? i guess it makes sense that there could be items found pretty far apart.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26976119/ - dude think he was eaten

I keep flashing back to this story from a couple years ago: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/02/03/airman.identified/index.html

Frozen WWII airman identified
Climbers found body in glacier, near where training craft crashed
Saturday, February 4, 2006; Posted: 9:53 p.m. EST (02:53 GMT)

ORANGE PARK, Florida (CNN) -- The U.S. military has identified the body of a World War II airman that climbers found in October at the bottom of a glacier in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Family members said they learned this week that the man was 22-year-old Army Air Corps cadet Leo Mustonen, who died in a 1942 plane crash.

Mustonen joined the Army during his senior year in high school in Brainerd, Minnesota, and was in training to become a navigator when he was reported missing on November 18, 1942.

Mustonen was son of Finnish immigrants. He was one of four cadets aboard a training flight that crashed in the Sierra Nevada mountains east of Fresno.

a little confusing - one report said the items were found around here^; most say it was around Minaret Lake, which is to the West. and articles say the areas around the Minarets (immediately to the West of the lake) and Mammoth Mountain (to the East, and South of Minaret Summit) will be searched.

"Minarets" is basically a catch all name for the area. Kinda like how "Yosemite" is used for all of Yosemite National Park, not just Yosemite Valley (which is how most people think of it)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/01/BAPT139M9N.DTL

now talking about "Ridge Lake," which I can't find anything else about

people have been known to walk away from crashes that appeared to be incapable of allowing one to survive though, no?

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gfmXbQn-RFLHSjd8_s23ytiM6OVAD93IEM581

http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2008/09/legal-intrigue.html

Could he have bailed before it hit the ground? Is that even remotely possible? I dunno.

that's what i'm wondering. everyone says he didn't have a parachute.

based on the testimony of his wife?

could he have put a parachute in the plane beforehand?

what do you think "everyone says he didn't have a parachute" means?

yeah, i mean could he have SNEAKED a parachute on like a week beforehand in a secret compartment, then gone out that day all "lahdida no parachute for me!"

what do you think "everyone says he didn't have a parachute" means?

― gabbneb, Thursday, October 2, 2008 12:47 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what's the stalling speed of the aircraft? could he have slowed it down to something like 30 mph then dived into a bush?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1066253/Pictured-The-mangled-wreckage-Steve-Fossetts-plane-search-teams-finds-ID-cash.html

http://www.cbs47.tv/mostpopular/story.aspx?content_id=8203532c-c2f2-436f-9da2-77ca3cf39a8d

says wreckage was near Minarets Summit

which is not very far from a lodge

http://www.topoquest.com/map.php?lat=37.65632&lon=-119.060409748&datum=nad83&zoom=8&map=auto&coord=d&mode=zoomin&size=m

and it seems to be a valley away from where the id and shirt were found

Why do I have a feeling you're about to claim Fossett secretly met with Obama there so they could encourage Phish to reunite?

I don't know, why do you think?

Oh well, you know.

u madd?

can't imagine a seasoned pilot would fly w/o a chute...just sayin' is all...

can't imagine a carcass could be picked so clean by varmints that nary a single bone would remain...just sayin' is all...

can't imagine a filthy-rich dude wouldn't have at at least a couple good reasons to disappear...just sayin' is all...

i can imagine all those things...just sayin' is all...

i think dude got blown off course by wind and fell out the plane, possibly eaten

can't imagine a seasoned pilot would fly w/o a chute...just sayin' is all...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Champion_Decathlon

Pretty common not to take chutes in planes like this

There's no way that no human remains are there, if he crashed with the plane. Perhaps he was thrown from it and survived long enough to crawl into a tiny little hole and die.

if parts of the plane were incinerated on impact, i think it's reasonable to imagine Fossett was too

Why do you think there are crematoriums, gabbs? It's kinda hard to turn bones into powder.

but i'm interested to know why identification and money that might have been in his pocket and a jacket/sweater he might have been wearing were apparently found far away. it's rubbernecky, sure, but what are we all doing here in the first place?

and why hasn't the suitcase full of money been found?...these rich guys never fly without one...

^^^ supports my thrown from the plane and crawling into a little hole to die theory

obv he jsut wanted his mystery to be more mysterious than prev record holder db cooper

id say fail

Maybe he had a body-sized airbag suit and he ejected just to bounce around awhile before coming to rest and that he died from hunger because he couldn't figure out how to pop the damned thing.

shoulda had one of them popcorn-filled airbags...

His body was probably scavenged and the bones scattered.

or washed away

or they walk the earth in search of that suitcase full of money...

We'll know for sure if a bear tries to make a bank deposit with a few thou of slightly singed bills any time soon.

Maybe he had a body-sized airbag suit and he ejected just to bounce around awhile before coming to rest and that he died from hunger because he couldn't figure out how to pop the damned thing.

http://www.ecopolis.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/039_20431woody-allen-in-sleeper-posters.jpg http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1281/1093690570_45324ff15e.jpg

Better map with the locations of everything: http://www.jaunted.com/special/Steve-Fossett-Search-Map

And a "before" picture of the plane:

http://www.aero-news.net/images/content/sportav/2007/N240R-Fossett-plane-0907a.jpg

Technically it's a Bellanca Super Decathlon, not a Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon (Citabria is another variation that looks similar)

Parachute wouldn't do you much good if you're flying at lower altitudes like they think he was. Conspiracy theories be damned, the guy just died when his plane smashed into the ground. Whether it was mechanical failure, human failure, or anything else, I doubt we'll ever know.

I'm just waiting for uninformed people to start going on about a black box and a parachute in a tiny airplane some more, though.

It's still kind of depressing because Fossett was inspirational to a lot of people. I remember being a kid and hearing about him and seeing articles on what he was up to in the EAA magazine, and now he's gone out in what should have been a completely standard flight.

Not surprisingly, the Wreckchasing message board has a big thread on this

Breaking News

A small amount of human remains has been found with the wreckage of adventurer Steve Fossett's plane, authorities say.

If I was super rich and liked to fly, I'd buy something like this. Note the second engine for additional death prevention:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Diamond_DA42_with_Mag_Booms.jpg

If I were super rich, I would deploy my resources in an effort to AVOID ever having sit awake for countless hours all alone in a tiny capsule hoping to make it home safe and have another chance to pee standing up

But that is, admittedly, just me

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gfmXbQn-RFLHSjd8_s23ytiM6OVAD93ILIOO0

If I was super rich and liked to fly, I'd buy something like this. Note the second engine for additional death prevention:

Too bad Diamond suspended production on the DA42 while they sort out the engine issues.

The bones are definitely his.

Bones confirm Steve Fossett death

The adventurer was 63 when his plane disappeared in September 2007

DNA tests have confirmed two large bones found near the wreckage of a plane in California are those of US millionaire Steve Fossett, police say. The adventurer was 63 when he disappeared in September 2007 while on a solo flight from a Nevada ranch. The bones were found last Wednesday 0.5 miles (0.8km) east of a crash site in isolated eastern California. Fossett's shoes and driver's licence were also found. Both showed evidence of animal bite marks, police said.

The NTSB has the last word

NTSB Identification: SEA07FA277
14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation
Accident occurred Monday, September 03, 2007 in Mammoth Lakes, CA
Probable Cause Approval Date: 7/9/2009 1:39:00 PM
Aircraft: Bellanca 8KCAB-180, registration: N240R
Injuries: 1 Fatal.

The pilot departed from a private airport at Flying M Ranch on a local personal flight, which ground personnel thought would last about 2.5 to 3 hours. When the airplane failed to return, it was reported missing and a search was started. No emergency locator transmitter (ELT) signal was received from the airplane. The Civil Air Patrol suspended its search activities after about 1 month. About 1 year later, a hiker found some of the pilot’s personal effects, and an aerial search located the airplane wreckage about 0.5 mile from the personal effects. The accident occurred in remote mountainous terrain at an elevation of 10,000 feet. After the wreckage was discovered, a review of radar data from September 3, 2007, revealed a track that ended about 1 mile northwest of the accident site. This 20-minute track showed the airplane flying south along the crest of a mountain range with elevations greater than 13,000 feet.

During the search efforts, aircraft had flown over the accident location but did not see the wreckage. Additionally, the 20-minute track had been ruled out as the accident flight due to a witness report of seeing the airplane near Yerington at the time of the track. The witness reported the time of his sighting based on a telephone call with a friend. The search team initially used the time provided by the witness. Later, it was determined from the telephone company’s time log that the witness-reported time was off by 1 hour.

Examination of the accident site revealed that the airplane was on a northerly heading at impact, indicating that the pilot had executed a 180-degree turn after radar contact was lost. Ground scars and distribution of the heavily fragmented wreckage indicated that the airplane was traveling at a high speed when it impacted in a right wing low, near level pitch attitude. A postimpact fire consumed the fuselage, with the exception of its steel frame. The wings were fragmented into numerous pieces. The ELT was destroyed. Damage signatures on the propeller blades and the engine crankshaft indicated that the engine was operating at impact. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any malfunctions or failures that would have prevented normal operation.

Visual meteorological conditions existed in the accident area at the time of the accident. Mean winds at 10,000 feet were from 220 degrees at 15 to 20 knots; some gusts of 25 to 30 knots may have occurred. Moderate turbulence and downdrafts of at least 400 feet per minute probably occurred at the time and in the area of the accident. The magnitude of the downdrafts likely exceeded the climb capability of the airplane, which, at a density altitude of 13,000 feet, was about 300 feet per minute.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:

The pilot’s inadvertent encounter with downdrafts that exceeded the climb capability of the airplane. Contributing to the accident were the downdrafts, high density altitude, and mountainous terrain.

Full report available at the link.