Duo's Bid to Cross Pacific

Two adventurers took off from Japan in a hot-air balloon early Tuesday, attempting to be the first to cross the Pacific Ocean since British entrepreneur Richard Branson made the trip in 1991.

Team leader Michio Kanda, 54, and his partner fired burners before dawn to lift their red, yellow and blue balloon into the air from heir launch site north of Tokyo. Called the Amanogawa No. 2, the 120-foot-tall balloon is about eight times bigger than the average hot-air balloon with a square, mostly aluminum gondola.

Kanda said the flight would probably take about 50 to 60 hours. He and his partner, 26-year-old graduate student Naoki Ishikawa, plan to land somewhere in Canada, or in Washington or Oregon, depending on wind conditions.

"We aim to see a world I've never seen. I would like to demonstrate how important it is to have a dream and a goal," said local government official Michio Kanda, 54, who holds the world record for flying in a balloon for 50 hours and 38 minutes without landing. He is aiming to beat his own record.

"I want to make the flight as the first step toward a future space flight. My dream is to land on the moon and climb a mountain there," Naoki Ishikawa, 26, a graduate student at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, said. This is the first balloon flight for  Ishikawa, who has scaled the summits of the seven continents.

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