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American Morning

Steve Fossett Faces a Long Journey

Aired August 09, 2001 - 10:22   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Another mission in the skies is under way right now. How's this for a million dollar view? Not too bad, huh? Well, this is Chicago millionaire Steve Fossett's fifth try to circle the globe alone in a balloon. Friends of his say that Fossett is sending e-mails from his sky high position, and so far things are a little bit boring, from what we're hearing.

But as you can see here, a long journey lies ahead for Fossett. Flight director Kevin Stass joins us now. He's got more on that. And as I understand it, Mr. Stass is joining us from flight control.

Good morning. How are you?

KEVIN STASS, FOSSETT'S FLIGHT DIRECTOR: Good morning, Leon. How are you?

HARRIS: Doing well. Now, we're looking right now at a picture that shows exactly the route that he's got to take. Where exactly is Steve Fossett right now?

STASS: Well, he's midway between Pago Pago and Rarotonga. He's about 168 degrees west, 18 degrees south.

HARRIS: What side of the International Date Line is that?

STASS: Yes, he's on -- he's past the International Date Line. He did that yesterday.

HARRIS: OK, good. So how is the progress going so far then?

STASS: It's going pretty good. He's heading in an easterly direction. At the moment, we're just waiting for him to do a little bit of a turn to the southwest and hopefully he'll go about 250 miles south of Tahiti and about 600 miles south of Easter Island.

HARRIS: All right, well, since this thing doesn't have a steering wheel, how does he make that turn?

STASS: Well, he's doing it in conjunction with our weather guru, Bob Rice (ph), who is looking at the weather all the time and predicting when...

HARRIS: I'm sorry, Ken, I hate to interrupt you, but there's a live event under way that we've been waiting for all morning. We'll have to break away and go to that right now.

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