Can you be content with a banal life when you are the grandson of a legendary scientist, who inspired Hergé for his character Professor Tournesol? Bertrand Piccard could not have been anyone other than himself: a man always ready to push the limits, to innovate, to go beyond what is. Twenty-five years ago, he accomplished a real feat: the first non-stop trip around the world in a balloon, aboard the Breitling Orbiter 3. A circumnavigation four times faster than that once imagined by Jules Verne for Phileas Fogg.
An emergency watch, in case of distress
On March 21, 1999, balloonists Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones
(photo)
completed their journey by landing their balloon in the Egyptian desert. Their journey, 45,633 kilometers traveled in 19 days, 21 hours and 47 minutes, remains the longest flight ever made, both in distance and duration.
“The memories are so vivid that it seems like it was yesterday. It's hard to believe it's been twenty-five years. Breitling has embarked…