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GlobalFlyer 'Round The World Solo Flight Takes Off
bryanthompson writes "The Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer took off from the Salina Municipal Airport this evening at about 6:47 CST. The Salina Airport was chosen for its central location, and the fact that it is one of the few air strips long enough for the flyer to take off successfully. The trip around the world is expected to take about 80 hours, with speeds averaging 285 mph. The craft was designed for Sir Richard Branson by Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, who also designed SpaceShipOne." Steve Fossett is piloting the craft, intended (as reader aallan puts it), "to be the first solo non-stop flight around the world without refuelling."
Live Tracking
I don't know if that's important, but it is the first solo non-refueling JET flight.
Fellowship 9/11
I was under the impression Rutan himself achieved this many moons ago. This one would the first jet-powered craft to do it, though.
The revolution will not be televised.
Modafinil might do the trick.
Mr. Rutan was accompanied by Ms. Yeager.
That plane was so loaded with fuel on takeoff, that the rate of climb was very very slow, maybe 150 ft/minute. The wings, which were loaded with fuel would droop down and had to be supported by small wheels at the wingtips until the plane gathered enough speed for the wings to develop lift.
I wish Fosset good luck on this journey. Things will be touch and go for awhile until the fuel load has been lightened and the plane becomes responsive. A lot of things can go wrong, but hopefully improved technology will make things easier and improve his chance of success for this round the world flight.
The fastest jet plane in the world is still the SR71 Blackbird. It flew at Mach 3.35 or 2,275 mph (3,660 km/h). The circumference of the earth is 24,859.82 miles (40,008 km). So that means the Blackbird would do a flight around the world in 11 hours. Unfortunately it only had a range of 2,590 nm (4,800 km), so it would have to refuel at least 9 times. In a way, it's amazing that someone can build a plane that can carry enough fuel and still do the trip in less than 8x the time.
How we know is more important than what we know.
They held up progress in aviation for almost 10 years in the US by making their plans secret and suing anybody who made planes. Their big patent fight was against Curtis Aircraft who invented ailerons, whereas the Wright's used wing-warping. During that time up till the early 20's, France took the lead in aviation, hence all the French sounding parts: fuselage, aileron, empenage, etc. Of course they contributed the most out of anyone in the old days but after the first few flyers there wasn't nearly as much innovation coming out of Wright Airplanes. The last truly succesful product they made, please correct me if I'm wrong, was the Wright Cyclone, a large radial engine used in WWII aircraft.
GlobalFlyer's takeoff weight of 22,000lbs is more than six times its empty weight, so once some of that fuel is gone it will be able to use a much shorter runway.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Those are just the ones that they can tell you about. Scaled is where the Skunk Works and other such places go when even they can figure something out.
He'll be sleeping longer than a few minutes, but there won't be any eight-hour snoozes for him. The autopilot ensures that no matter what his alertness condition, the appropriate settings will be used to maximize fuel efficiency. He'll have the option of taking over in an emergency, but for the most part, he's just along for the ride.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
B) How is he storing all that fuel?
Both answers can be found in the plane description at http://www.virginatlanticglobalflyer.com/Aircraft
Landing generally takes anywhere from 3/4 to as little as about 1/3 of the length required to get off the ground. Obviously this depends a lot on the plane's design, but I've yet to see ANY fixed-wing aircraft that requires more runway to land than to take off. (The space shuttle doesn't count.)
When you're landing, you can dump your (remaining) fuel and land at a much lighter weight, thereby giving the brakes less energy to dissipate. Also, brakes are typically far more efficient at destroying thrust than engines are at creating it. Finally, most aircraft have other thrust- and lift-destroying devices that can be deployed during a maximum-performance landing (thrust reversers, speed brakes, spoilers, etc.), all of which help to reduce the landing distance, but don't help takeoffs at all.
The point of this long-windedness is basically to say that they won't have any problem finding emergency landing strips in the (fairly unlikely, IMO) event that they need one.
IAAP&CFI.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Actually, not only has a solo circumglobal flight been done before, Fossett was the one who did it, albeit in a balloon.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Sure it can. IAAP (I am a pilot) and especially for a relatively risky flight like this, it makes good sense to sometimes go a bit out of one's way so as to fly a route closer to available facilities or over better terrain.
Assuming the report is accurate, you could say the decreased fuel burn is the up side of the change. The down side is the new route may carry some increased risk. Otherwise I don't know why they wouldn't have chosen that route to begin with.
BTW, on the real-time display I notice the flight appears to have deviated north 20 miles or so around the Chicago airspace en route to Detroit.
The "Jet" or "gas turbine" is a turbofan engine similar to those fitted to small corporate aircraft like Learjets... They are not gas hogs.
To be clearer: they are at low altitudes. At 45,000 feet (Global Flyer's cruising altitude,) the fuel efficiency is impecable.
Fuel is stored in tanks in the wings, pontoons and forward fuselage... basically, the plane is a fishtank for a couple hours until he can get some fuel out of the wings and make it into a more "flyable" bomb.
If internal compustion engines were more efficient than gas turbines, why weren't they implemented in the airline industry?
Furthermore, I'd much rather have a turbine because they have so few moving parts... the simplest have one! Less to breakdown on you while you are pissing out the window into an infinite void of pacific waves 45,000 feet below...
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
Read here
The FAI's rules state that a record attempt like this must start and finish at the same airfield and cross all meridians of the globe. What's more the course must not be less than the very precise figure of 36,787.559 kilometres (around 23,000 miles) which is equal in length to the Tropic of Cancer.
They're going to try to catch the most wind they can.. so there will be some deviation in the flight plans I'm sure as they follow the currents.
-Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
A big factor in the design was making maximum use of the jet stream. At slower speeds, the jet stream contributes a greater percentage of the energy required for the trip.
Good question BTW.
The little thing lost off the wingtip was not a stabilizer, but a winglet. Its only function is to modify the airflow around the wingtip in a subtle way that decreases the drag slightly, and the impact of losing it was a decrease in gas mileage.[/pedantry]
rj
There was already no need to stop on a flight from New York to Tokyo:
You already didn't need to stop on a flight from New York to Tokyo:
American Airlines launches New York - Tokyo flights
Note that this is old news. It takes about twelve and a half hours.
An F1 does not need to refule every two miles or so. F1's are some of the most efficient automobiles in the world right now. People think efficiency is about low gas milage, but it is really about wasting as little energy as possible. In a race, wasted energy corresponds to wasted time.
Think of it this way: When you're on a curvy race track, like the Monaco GP, you're constantly accelerating, trying to go as fast as you can, until you come to a turn and have to brake hard. (You want really good brakes too, so that you can stop quickly) Then you have to accelerate again. The more efficiently you convert chemical energy into forward motion, the faster you reach top speed and coast a bit before slowing down as quickly as possible.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Length isn't the only reason. The Global Flyer's service ceiling is about 50,000 feet. Voyager's was 11,000 (it was unpressurised). Even if Global Flyer's speed weren't so much faster, being above all the weather has some pretty huge advantages on its own.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
The GlobalFlyer is actually powered by a turbofan, not a jet. These engines use a jet engine to spin a fan which produces the majority of the thrust. Air entering the cowling is divided between entering a the compressor intake and (the majority) bypasses the compressor and is blown out by the fan. A minority percentage of the thrust actually comes from the combustion gases. Turbofans are what move commercial airliners. In a true jet powered craft, all the thrust comes from combustion gases.
At the time that they landed, they thought they had enough fuel to fly most of the way across the US. I was watching the live coverage, and I remember it. It wasn't until after they drained/dipped the tanks that they realized they were running so short on fuel.
A few gallons would probably have been all that they needed to do this. At that point the thing was mostly a glider.
The Voyager flew most of the time only on the Continental IOL-200 rear engine. It's an unusual engine, so fuel flow specs aren't easily found, but the Continental O-200 from which it was derived consumes 5.5-6 gallons/hour (or 33-36 lbs/hour) at cruise. The IOL-200 is more efficient, but not enough to make a substantial difference in endurance with only 6 of fuel. That's usually over the range of 50% to 75% power, which is what aviation engines cruise at. Outside that range, they are not very efficient.
You can get some idea of Voyager's average fuel flow from:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/ruta nvoy.htm
They lifted off with 7,011 lbs of fuel. They landed with 48 lbs (8 gallons). Having flown 24,986 miles in just a bit over 216 hours, that's 3.6 miles per lb of fuel, or 32 lb/hour. Using those average numbers, they weren't going to get much further on 48 lbs of fuel.
Of course as you point out, they had burned off most of their gross weight. But the reduced weight would only reduce the induced drag. It wouldn't have reduced the parasitic drag. So, the increased fuel efficiency would not be as large as the difference in the gross weight. There's no way they could have kept the engine running for 3000+ miles on 8 gallons of gas.
And I can tell you from personal experience (I have a glider rating on my pilot certificate), even the highest performance glider won't cover any significant portion of the distance across the continental US in the absence of power or lift in the form of thermals or mountain waves. And the Voyager wasn't designed to fly any distance without power.
If it were that easy, somebody would have done it a long time ago. The problem is that adding fuel tanks adds weight, a lot of weight. Most planes a designed to carry a certain weight of cargo, including people and packages, but just adding that much weight in fuel does not get you that much more.
By using a smaller plane they can use much less fuel at a time, and they worked very hard to get the exact mixture of fuel-weight ratio. Simply adding another tank would throw off the whole equation. You have a lot more weight and while the amount of weight may go down over time as the fuel is used, you have to have a bigger engine simply to take off. Even when the extra fuel is depleted you still have the extra weight of the fuel tanks.
As I said in my other post, Popular Science wrote a great article on it.
-> Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!