Telegraph | News | Indian reaches 69,852ft to claim balloon record

Telegraph | News | Indian reaches 69,852ft to claim balloon record:

Indian reaches 69,852ft to claim balloon record / David Orr in Delhi / (Filed: 27/11/2005)

An Indian industrialist and adventurer has confounded sceptics by claiming a new world altitude record in a hot air balloon.

After lifting off from Bombay, the 67-year-old multi-millionaire, Vijaypat Singhania, yesterday piloted his craft to a height of 69,852ft - more than 13 miles, or twice as high as a passenger jet would normally fly.

The previous record holder, a Swede, had said his 1988 feat could not be broken with current technology.

[...] Mr Singhania's balloon, higher than a 20-storey building, was designed and built in Britain. The flight advisers were two British aviators, Andy Elson and Colin Prescot, best known for filming the aerial sequences in the Harry Potter and recent James Bond films.

"This is a great achievement and unusual for India which has no history of this kind of thing", said Mr Prescot, speaking in Bombay. "No human being can survive long at the altitude Vijay went to, at that height the bodily fluids begin to boil. And, before his flight, no one had ever managed to burn fuel at such an altitude." [...]