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GlobalFlyer Aims To Go Voyager One Better
LucidBeast writes "We all remember Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world in 1986 on one tank of gas. Now Voyager pilot Steve Fossett plans to do it solo with a jet powered GlobalFlyer. See also New York Times article about it (registration required). The idea of the solo flight according to this story originated with the Voyager builder Dick Rutan." Update: 12/01 13:25 GMT by T : Note, the original submission reversed the roles of Rutan and Fossett; Fossett is the pilot, while Rutan (and his company, Scaled Composites) is the builder.
According to the site, the flight will take 80 hours. How does the pilot plan to stay awake that long?
My guess would be amphetamines, which are supposed to be reasonably safe in a small and short term dose. I wonder if it's legal though? Special permits?
Disclaimer: I have no practical experience with amphetamines nor any real knowledge on how safe they really are.
.: Max Romantschuk
Why not just implant the memory of flying solo around the world in a jet - as a secret agent?
(Too many Arnie movies)
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
As long as we're at it, I might point out that while Burt designed Voyager, and his company Scaled Composites is the builder of record, that doesn't mean that Dick didn't build it as well.
He may well still be scraping expoy out from underneath his fingernails. As may be Jeanna.
One of the remarkable aspects of the Voyager story is the way they invested years of their lives "home" building the sucker with their own hands, and often the hands of any sucker who happened to be wandering by.
KFG
...I wonder why Boeing didn't consider trying to fly around the world non-stop on a 747SP back in the early 1980's? A 747SP fully fuelled up and also loaded with the equivalent of a full passenger/cargo load in fuel probably could have come close if they used pre-cooled JP4 fuel.