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Steve Fossett declared dead Well known aviation adventurer Steve Fossett has been declared dead after months of searching for his Nevada crash site using every tool available in the modern search and rescue arsenal.
Steve has joined that small, select group of aviation icons who flew off into the sunset, never to be seen again.
Not a bad way for an aviator to go, actually.
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What’s amazing is after all the dangerous things he did chasing after one record or another the flight that did him in was a ordinary, everyday hop between two airports. Nothing special.
With apologies, Dale, as I’ve arrived late to this story: Is there a reasonable degree of certainty that the crash site was indeed in Nevada?
-James
Once resigned to the loss, the worst part is never knowing what happened to a guy like that.
Enduring curiosity.
Perhaps he found Galt’s Gulch.
From what I understand, Fossett wasn’t just flying from one airport to another, he was looking for a site for his next adventure. This consisted of flying low and staring out the window. Flying friends tell me this is a pretty sure way to get yourself killed.
Point is, that Fossett died being stupid (assuming he died and isn’t in South America with his mistress or anything.)
In that case Joe, please let us see the flight recorder that must have in your possetion so the rest of us can learn what you know. Clearly you seem to have knowledge of what happened to Steve Fossett beyond just “he crashed” and therefore can say it was stupidity rather that a mechanical failure or a bird strike that caused his death. Or then again it could be you are just showing us what happens when people post comments while suffering from hypoxia
“Not a bad way for an aviator to go, actually.”
We don’t know exactly how he went. Did he snuff out in a second? Or did he lay conscience for hours in a puddle of his own vomit, blood, urine and fecal matter, agonizing in pain and horrific, mind-numbing thirst while waiting for the rescue that would not come in time? Did insects and rodents of the desert gnaw at him alive and conscience while he lay paralyzed, with nothing he could do about it? Did he lay helpless while maggots bloomed in his wounds, with a myriad of other egg-laying insects using him as a living, conscience incubator for their spawn?
Do you still think it was necessarily “”Not a bad way for an aviator to go, actually?”
Scottynx: you’re weird.
Rest in peace Mr Fossett.
I stand by my comments. Steve Fossett was a risk taker and doing work on his next idiotic adventure. He wasn’t just traveling. Moreover, given what he was doing, going with the obvious is a pretty safe guess.
As previously offered, you have no way of knowing what could have happened. Pilot error? Maybe. But feel free to stand behind your baseless speculation if you wish.
Why is adventuring ‘idiotic’?
A brave man who did exciting things is dead. Joe is a troll and should be ignored and scottynx has been reading too many Stephen King books.
What actually killed Steve Fossett is not the issue. I agree with Dale that for a man like Steve Fossett what could he have chosen as a better way to go. As an intelligent man Steve Fossett must have contemplated the possibility of his own death many times and yet he chose to continue to live his life as he did.
Shove it Joe. I for one envy SF his life.
Civilisation was built by risk takers. Civilisation is currently in grave danger eroded by the successive waves of governments and the miriad do-gooders trying to legislate safety and precautionary principles etc. The debt we owe to the Steve Fossets, Amelia Earharts and John ALcocks of this world, who died doing something “stupid” is immeasurable.
He was chasing pointless aviation records, which all of them are since the moon landing.
Ten years from now, a house-husband in New Jersey will be asked “Aren’t you Steve Fossett, the aviator who mysteriously disappeared back in ’07?”
The guy will lawyer up, sue, and settle out of court for a cool $350 G.
So predictable.
I was not surprised when they could not find the crash site. My dad trained at an airbase nearby in WWII, and he said they lost quite a few planes there in the mountains and deserts. Some planes just disappeared. They are still finding planes and bodies from that era in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
More pointless than say throwing a ball into a hoop or driving around a racetrack really fast? Do you also find most if not all sports, well recreation generally, idiotic too? Just curious.
When one is not reaching for the stars, at least it’s good to have competition and spectators. Flying around the world in a baloon is about as noteworthy as crossing the Channel using backstroke. Anyway, it’s his life, he’s done with it what he wanted to do. Just don’t ask me to be impressed.
I often find those who most complain or denigrate the accomplishments of others do so because they have none of their own.
Bob Hoover once talked about the worst possibilities open to his profession, and along the way, he said, “No matter what, you have to keep flying the airplane as far into the crash as you possibly can.”
It takes a very particular spirit to think about it like that, and it’s always impressed me, for one.
Scottynx is really, really weird. He does have a point, though, Dale.
This was one of the more amusing series of volleys I’ve read in awhile, thanks. As usual, some take the hero-worship aura too seriously – but I suppose there’ll always be folk visiting Graceland because it gives us a sense of the possibility of magic in an otherwise quite mundane, painful existence. Some thrillseekers are lucky enough to also be well-off, which yields dividends of publicity and fame – and can also push them to the edges of risk (Knievel actually regretted having felt the need to take up certain challenges that broke many of his bones, and Crocodile Hunter lived a life of great risk-taking to where the accident that killed him was still outside the bounds of what most of our lives ever entail doing … making it no real surprise).
I never had a chance to meet him but he had a good life. He was my grandfathers (Pual Fossett) cousin