BALLOON FLIGHT MAKES HISTORY; NONSTOP TRIP CIRCLES GLOBE.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

Achieving what promoters called the last great milestone of aviation, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones joined legends like the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh with today's completion of the first manned round-the-world balloon flight.

The Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon landed north of Mut, Egypt, 300 miles southwest of Cairo, this morning (10 p.m. Saturday PST). Mut is in the Dakhla oasis, an ancient Roman outpost that stood on an African trade route at the time of Nero's rule, A.D. 54-68.

The history-making moment came Saturday when, after 19 days aloft, the huge silver balloon floated over Mauritania past longitude 9 degrees west at 1:54 a.m. PST to complete the 26,000-mile-plus, nonstop circumnavigation, a feat that had challenged and eluded dozens of balloonists before them.

The team of balloon builders, meteorologists, friends and family gathered around computer terminals in the Geneva control center burst into cheers and applause as official word arrived that the balloon had landed.

Wearing sweat shirts with the Breitling logo and photos of the balloonists on their backs, the team poured glasses of champagne to toast the end of the 20-day ordeal.

``We had a very good landing,'' said Don Cameron, whose company in Bristol, England, manufactured the history-making balloon.

Piccard, a 41-year-old psychiatrist who comes from a family of pioneers, used self-hypnosis throughout the flight to help cope with the tension. Jones, a 51-year-old balloon instructor and grandfather, relied on his rock-steady nerves.

But for all the dangers and difficulties of long-distance ballooning, the historic 478-hour voyage was relatively uneventful.

The team lifted off from the snowy Swiss Alps on March 1, drifted down to the sands of North Africa, caught a jet stream and headed across the Arabian Desert, over teeming India and on to the lush green of Southeast Asia.

The treacherous Pacific Ocean crossing proved relatively smooth, accomplished in six days. East of Central America, seven miles high, the balloonists were trapped in a lazy spiral and developed temporary breathing problems in the deeply frigid air. But the 180-foot-high balloon soon caught a favorable jet stream that propelled them on their last leg, at 90 mph across the Atlantic.

Since U.S. publisher James Gordon Bennett established a trophy for long-distance ballooning in 1906, sportsmen have striven to fly the farthest, eventually setting their sights on a round-the-world flight. Americans Maxie Anderson and Don Ida made the first attempt in 1981, but flew only 2,676 miles, from Egypt to India.

This was the third attempt sponsored by the Swiss watch and precision instrument manufacturer Breitling, and the company had said it would be the last.

Breitling has refused to say how much money it has pumped into the project, but it is certainly many times more than the $1 million prize offered by brewer Anheuser-Busch for completing the global circuit.

Flight director Alan Noble said the next step probably would be to stage a round-the-world balloon race, assuming funds could be found.

Two of the team's keenest rivals paid tribute.

``It is a magnificent achievement, and two delightful people have achieved it, and we look forward to going to Switzerland to celebrate it with them tomorrow,'' British tycoon Richard Branson told Sky television news.

American millionaire Steve Fossett, who had teamed with Branson in an attempt last December, said Jones and Piccard had won ``one of the greatest competitions in aviation history.''

This was Piccard's third attempt. Last year he was forced to ditch in Myanmar, also known as Burma, after his balloon was refused permission to cross China. This year the team delayed their departure until they got Beijing's approval.

Piccard followed the adventuring tradition in his family, which began in 1931 when his physicist grandfather Auguste and his partner became the first men ever to take a balloon into the stratosphere, rising almost 10 miles high. Three years later Auguste's twin brother, Jean-Felix, went even higher, to 11 miles.

In 1960, Auguste's son, Jacques, took a super submarine called a bathyscaph (after the Greek for ``deep boat'') to the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific - the deepest point on the earth's surface. Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh went down to nearly seven miles below sea level.

``I'm very, very proud of Bertrand,'' said Jacques Piccard. ``It was his idea, his preparation, his dream. I could only encourage him,'' he said with tears in his eyes.

``I feel like the happiest brother in the world,'' said Bertrand's brother Thierry - who confessed he didn't like flying.

Piccard's wife, Michelle, and his three small children were headed to Egypt to meet their hero. Jones' wife Joanna stayed in Geneva working with the control team.

OTHER GREAT MILESTONES

Pilots Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones secured their place in the pantheon of adventurers Saturday. Here are some other great moments:

circa 400: Polynesian sailors reach Hawaii.

circa 1000: Leif Eriksson leads a Viking expedition to Newfoundland.

1271: Marco Polo begins a 20-year exploration of China that brings to Europe the first word of the wonders of the Far East.

Oct. 12, 1492: Christopher Columbus and crew sight land in the present-day Bahamas.

Sept. 6, 1522: Juan Sebastian de Elcano of Spain leads the remnants of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition to complete the first voyage around the world.

July 3, 1898: Capt. Joshua Slocum of the United States becomes the first to sail around the world alone.

Dec. 17, 1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright make first powered, sustained and controlled flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

April 6, 1909: Robert E. Peary of the United States claims to reach the North Pole. Whether he did remains in dispute.

Dec. 14, 1911: Roald Amundsen of Norway and three companions are the first to reach the South Pole.

June 15, 1919: Captain John Alcock of Britain and Arthur Whitten Brown of the United States reach Ireland on the first powered flight across the Atlantic.

May 21, 1927: Charles A. Lindbergh of the United States completes the first solo flight across the Atlantic.

May 29, 1953: Tenzing Norgay of Tibet and Edmund Hillary of New Zealand are the first to scale Mount Everest.

April 12, 1961: Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union is the first human to orbit the Earth in a spacecraft.

July 21, 1969: Neil Armstrong of the United States is the first human to step on the moon.

April 30, 1978: Naomi Uemura of Japan makes the first solo expedition, on a dog sled, to the North Pole.

Jan. 18, 1997: Borge Ousland of Norway completes the first solo trek across Antarctica.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, 2 Boxes

PHOTO (Color) The Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon completed circumnavigation of the globe Saturday morning.

Fabrice Coffrini/Associated Press

BOX: (1) OTHER GREAT MILESTONES (see text)

(2) CIRCLING THE WORLD IN A BALLOON

Associated Press