Around the world with the wind.

• Author: Piccard, Bertrand
• Position: Passing By (literally! - Breitling Orbiter 3 journey

There are many ways of characterizing the first non-stop balloon trip around the world which the Breitling Orbiter 3 team completed in March 1999: athletic, historic, technological, human or even philosophical. All these different facets have excited me, because they contain all the necessary ingredients for constructing a major epic while at the same time explaining its interest and success.

Originally, it was a dream that any pilot in love with his sport might cherish: to execute the ultimate, the longest, the most passionate flight around the world. This was the dream of a number of aeronauts, the first attempt being in 1981, and it became a veritable competition beginning in the early 1990s. The International Aeronautics Federation developed rules: the flight had to be more than 25,000 kilometres, cross all the meridians and remain outside two caps, one on each pole, with a radius of 6,000 kilometres.

The public and the media viewed it as the greatest adventure of the century. The poles, the continents, the mountains, outer space and the depths of the sea had all been explored, but the balloon, even though invented in 1783, had not yet travelled around the world. It remained a blank page to be written in the history books.

The adventure also took on the allure of a technological challenge. At the time I began organizing the Breitling Orbiter project, the longest-flying balloon had been in the air six days, while our meteorologists recommended that we be independent for three weeks. We would have to build a monstrous shell, some 55 metres high, covered by a thermal isolation layer, as well as a pressurized cabin that would allow a team to survive at an altitude of 10,000 metres, where the jet streams blow. For several years, each competitor threw himself into in-depth research and met with bitter failure. But, after all, isn't it normal to remember that dreams can only be realized after much effort and sacrifice?

Naturally, I was motivated by the challenges described above, but another aspect fascinated me even more: the symbolic side. Until then, science had afforded tremendous progress, but most inventions were intended to allow man better control over the forces of nature. In our case, pilots had to surrender themselves to the elements, let themselves be pushed by air currents. One must understand that a balloon is carried by the wind, at the same speed and in the same direction.

The sole purpose of the ultra-sophisticated technology...