[Normy]

Steve Fossett took off in an aircraft that was properly designed, probably correctly fueled, and I'm certain that this very proficient pilot probably did a decent preflight inspection/weather check before he left.

He didn't file a flight plan. According to what I've read about this, he was going out "scouting" for dry lake beds on which to make a top-speed run upon. This doesn't imply any sort of aerobatics, but it does imply that he would be flying left, right, over here, over there...a flight that would be basically impossible to plot out for an FAA flight service follower.

-The Champion Decathlon aircraft that he was flying is literally a flying Lotus Elise. Only, this "Elise" makes a Hummer H1 look poorly built. This airplane is rated to fly at 6 g's, or 6 times the force of gravity continuously. That's the certification: in order to meet this certification, the company in Minnesota that built this plane had to prove that it could withstand 50% more than this, or 9 g's.

The airplane didn't "break". My theory is that the 6.0 liter four-cylinder engine that powers his plane had some sort of catastrophic failure, and he was forced to land. Did he survive the landing in rough terrain? You decide. A Decathlon can typically land in about 500 feet, and it isn't hard to find a 500 foot stretch of somewhat-flat terrain out there. I bet he landed the thing after the motor blew, and he's either trying to walk to a road or he hit a stump, flipped over, and was killed when a branch went through the cockpit...and him.

N!