On March 1, 1999 balloon Breitling Orbiter 3 with Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones on board started from Swiss town of Chateau d’Oex and landed in Egypt after 478 hours of flight having covered 45,755 km. Thus the aeronauts completed the world’s first non-stop balloon flight around the globe. Does Bertrand’s surname sound familiar to you? Well, you are right: he is a son and grandson of scientists. His grandfather is famous Auguste Piccard, outstanding Swiss physicist, inventor of stratospheric balloon and bathyscaphes. Moreover, he was the designer of bathyscaphe Trieste which completed the record Mariana Trench dive. Bertrand’s father is the famous Swiss oceanographer who performed the said Mariana Trench dive and wrote book Seven Miles Down about it. Psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard did not follow in his father’s footsteps, but chose his own way dealing with aeronautics. When a child, he watched the launches of spaceships from Cape Canaveral, and this fact pre-destined his fate. Bertrand Piccard has recently built an aircraft powered by solar batteries and dreams about performing a flight around the globe piloting this airplane.
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Information provided by the Scientific Russia News Agency. Media outlet’s registration certificate: IA No. FS77-62580 issued by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media on July 31, 2015.
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