Steve Fossett: The US adventurer and businessman Steve Fossett set more than 100 world records, among them five circumnavigations of the globe, straining the limits of airplanes, boats and balloons.
He accumulated records much as he did the merit badges he had sewn on to his sash while on his way to becoming an eagle scout. Once a millionaire, he became dedicated to achievement for its own sake.
On September 3rd this year, he had been a guest at the Flying M, a Nevada ranch owned by hotel heir Barron Hilton. At 8am, he left for a short spin in the ranch's single-engine Citabria two-seater, filing no flight plan and omitting to take a distress pack. Neither he nor the plane were seen again, despite a widespread air search of rugged terrain lasting for more than a month. On Monday, his wife Peggy petitioned a Chicago court as the first step in having him declared legally dead at the age of 63, saying that "after three months, we must accept that Steve did not survive".
Fossett was best known in Britain first for his rivalry, then his collaborations, with Sir Richard Branson. The two became friends after ballooning together in Morocco. In 1998, they crashed memorably in Hawaii on Christmas Day while competing together in a round-the-world balloon race. Fossett went on in 2005 to make the first solo non-stop and unrefuelled circumnavigation of the world in the Branson-sponsored aircraft Global Flyer, while last year he set a world record for the longest non-stop flight in the same craft, covering 26,389 miles in 76 hours.
Although they shared a passion for setting records, Fossett lacked Branson's self-publicising urge. His indulgence, facilitated by the fortunes he made, lost and made again in commodity brokerage, were more a reflection of a desire to reach ever more distant goals, an extension of an ethos developed as a boy scout.
Born in Jackson, Tennessee, Fossett was raised in California. Self- confessedly unathletic, he developed asthma, but found an outlet for his energies in scouting. He rose to scouting's highest level, eagle scout, an achievement he rated along with his most challenging world records.
He graduated from Stanford University in 1966 and took an MBA from Washington University, in St Louis, Missouri, two years later. A spell as a computer programmer in Chicago convinced him to look for something else, and he took a job with Merrill Lynch. Making (and losing) fortunes in commodities, particularly soya beans, he opened his own brokerage firms, Lakota Trading, Marathon Securities and Larkspur Securities, and retired in 1990.
He was already devoted to endurance sports. Despite lacking experience with cross- country skis, in 1979 he was an inaugural participant in the Worldloppet, a series of Nordic marathon races based on Sweden's Vasaloppet. In 1980 he became only the eighth person to complete all 10 Worldloppet events.
He competed in the Iditarod sled dog race, the Ironman triathlon, the 24-hour motor races at Le Mans and Daytona and even swam the English Channel, winning the prize in 1985 for the slowest crossing, taking 22 hours 15 minutes to complete the swim.
Fossett found his metier piloting craft on the sea and in the air. From 1993-2004 he set 23 world records and nine distance race records in his maxi-catamaran, originally named Play Station, but later renamed Cheyenne.
In 2001 he and his crew made a transatlantic crossing in four days 17 hours, knocking more than 43 hours off the record for such a craft. Three years later, they went round the world in 58 days nine hours, a record since broken by Bruno Peyron.
The round-the-world and longest flight records by the Global Flyer were arguably his finest achievements and indicated his commitment to setting his marks.
As a pilot in heavier aircraft, Fossett set two records in one day, February 5th, 2003, when he flew his Cessna Citation X jet from San Diego to Charleston, South Carolina, in less than three hours at an average speed of 726.8mph, a record for non-supersonic aircraft. Then he made the return trip as co-pilot to Joe Ritchie and broke the turbo-prop record set by test pilot Chuck Yeager, featured in Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff.
Fossett moved to gliders, setting 10 world records with New Zealander Terry Delore as his co-pilot. Wearing pressurised Nasa space suits, he and Icelander Einar Enevoldson set an altitude record by gliding at 50,727 feet.
In 1995 he made the first solo Pacific crossing in a hot-air balloon, but it took six attempts before he was able to finally complete a circumnavigation. In 2002, taking off from Northam, Western Australia, he piloted a balloon around the world, eventually bringing it down in Queensland after flying for 14 days 19 hours.
As his recent launch of an attempt at the world land speed record showed, he remained an over-achieving eagle scout to the end, and records and medals were there to be achieved.
James Stephen Fossett, born April 22th, 1944; died on or after September 3rd, 2007.