A licensed hot air balloon pilot herself, Ichiyoshi Sabu's wife knows about fear. After her husband came close to losing his life trying to fly over Mount Everest, she put her foot down. No more daredevil stunts, she declared; you've a family to think of. This explains why he will be ground master of an expedition this autumn that aims to fly a hot air balloon from Pakistan to China across the infamous peak K2.

Having (somehow) read his map upside down, I was hot under the collar on arrival at his office in Tokyo's Ogikubo. Despite my failing basic navigation, Sabu remained Mr. Cool. Secretary General of the Japan Buoyant Flight Association, he had just returned from Friedrichshafen, the small German town on Lake Constance where the first Zeppelin airship was launched July 2, 1900. "I was attending the naming of the latest Zeppelin, based on new technology, 100 years later to the day. Just 60-meters long, it's a cross between a blimp and a rigid dirigible -- the direction in which airship design is heading."

It was a surprise to hear that the concept of the commercial airship was still alive. Sabu explained that development was stopped not so much by the Hindenberg disaster of 1937, or the fact that not a single airship survived WWII, as by their expense. Early models needed a small army of ground crew. Development these days is toward a design requiring one or no staff on terra firma.