JohnDas FunDas & Ideas

Record breaking millionaire (billionaire ?) adventurer Steve Fossett has been missing for a few days now. (Its not Fosett or Fosset - Google corrected me)

Fossett, a Stanford University graduate with a master’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis, went to Chicago to work in the securities business and ultimately founded his own firm, Marathon Securities.

He went missing on Tuesday after taking off in a single-engine plane the day before to scout locations for a land-speed record .

Last year, Mr Fossett smashed the record for flying further than anyone in history.

In 2002, Fossett became the first person to fly around the world alone in a balloon. In two weeks, his balloon flew 19,428.6 miles around the Southern Hemisphere. The record came after five previous attempts — some of them spectacular and frightening failures.

It is among dozens of firsts claimed by Fossett in his life as an adventurer, which he embarked on after a successful career in securities. He set marks for speed or distance in balloons, airplanes, gliders, sailboats — even cross-country skis and an airship, according to his Web site.

Fossett has climbed some of the world’s best-known peaks, including the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. He also swam the English Channel in 1985, placed 47th in the Iditarod dog sled race in 1992, participated in the 24 Hours of Le Mans car race in 1996 and broke the round-the-world sailing record by six days in 2004.

In 1995, Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, landing in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Fossett was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in July. He told a crowd gathered at the Dayton Convention Center in Ohio that he would continue flying.

“I’m hoping you didn’t give me this award because you think my career is complete, because I’m not done,” Fossett said.

Fossett said he planned to go to Argentina in November in an effort to break a glider record.

In March 2005, he became the first person to fly a plane solo around the world without refueling. He and a co-pilot also claim to have set a world glider altitude record of 50,671 feet during a flight in August 2006 over the the Andes Mountains.

He flew 26,389.3 miles in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer and the record-breaking journey lasted 76 hours and 45 minutes, beating the former record of 25,361 miles set by the Breitling Orbiter balloon in 1999.

Mr Fossett’s record journey in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer was sponsored by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, who is also known for his daredevil record attempts and followed Mr Fossett in a support plane.

The 63-year-old, famed for his numerous solo flights around the globe by airplane and balloon, is understood to be unaccounted for since Monday.

Mr Fossett took off in a single engine Bellanca at 8.45am yesterday at a private airstrip at the Hilton Ranch in western Nevada but did not return as scheduled.

A friend later reported him missing, said Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman in Maryland.

The Internet has given credit to University of Cape Town student Marco Gallotta, a computer science major, with discovering that by pressing the right keys while checking out Google Sky (they’re totally different keys for OS X) users are given a choice of flying an F-16 Viper, for those that like to boogie, or a Cirrus SR22 prop plane, for those that prefer the scenic route.

So get the ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL Google Pack with Google Earth right now !!!

Be careful not to fly too high though !!!

You just might end up lost in Google Space.

To start Open Google Earth 4.4 and press Ctrl+Alt+A (if you’re running OS X it’s Command+Option+A; some people have reported that Ctrl+A or Ctrl+Windows+A work when the standard Ctrl+Alt+A does not)

If you are struggling to get into flight simulator mode then follow the instructions below to manually enable flight simulator. After enabling, go Tools -> Enter Flight Simulator.

Windows:

Download FlightSim.reg, double click on it and restart Google Earth.

Linux:

echo 1 > .googleearth/Registry/google/googleearthplus/User/flightsim/isena

Here’s what Marco says :

Some time last week, Google expanded Google Earth with Google Sky. As fascinating as Google Sky is, that’s not the focus of this post. Along with the latest update comes a hidden feature of which I cannot seem to find any other information about. It’s not in the release notes and a search on Google produces no results. Seems Google have done one of their unpublicised updates they’re becoming well-known for.
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