THE aircraft in which Steve Fossett took off from the Flying M ranch in Nevada on September 3rd 2007 was nothing special. It was not the stiff white dragonfly GlobalFlyer, a delicate construction of carbon fibre with all its interstices filled with fuel, in which in 2005 he had made the first non-stop solo flight round the world. Nor was it the silvery inflated sphere, ten storeys high and fitted with giant propane burners, in which in 2002 he had made the first solo circumnavigation of the globe by balloon. It was a Bellanca Super Decathlon two-seater with a single engine, one of several sitting round the ranch that day, in which Mr Fossett might leave as casually as a boy might take a bike ride to the grocery store.
Nor did he plan to be away long. The man who had once spent 67 hours flying in a seven-foot coffin round the world, sustained by protein milkshakes and a catheter and kept awake by talking to Richard Branson, had reckoned to be back by lunchtime. Accordingly, where he had sometimes climbed on board with 20lb of aeronautical maps, enough supplies to fill an aisle of Walgreen's and, for quieter moments, “War and Peace”, he now took only a bottle of water with him, and no parachute.
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