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GlobalFlyer Completes Record-Breaking Flight
ikewillis writes "Steve Fossett has successfully landed the GlobalFlyer in Kansas, completing the record-breaking flight and becoming the first person to successfully circle the earth in a nonstop solo flight. The journey of 37,000 kilometres has taken 67 hours, many of them fraught with anxiety over whether the custom-made GlobalFlyer aircraft had enough fuel for the trip. Fossett managed to touch down at 2:48 p.m. EST, to the delight of mission control staff, a small crowd and a marching band that had gathered at the airstrip to welcome him."
My congrats to the team. It's nice to see that the lack of testing at full fuel didn't do the mission in, and that they were able to take a position in the record books. :)
Clean coal harnesses the awesome power of the word 'clean'.
I'm wondering how much fuel was left when he landed, given that problem with the missing 2600 lb of fuel. The journey took about 68 hours by my calculations, which was considerably below the initial estimate of 80 hours.
nbc news had this story http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7075972/
Ya think he might want to take a ship back to the U.K.? He's probably not going to want a milkshake for a few days either.
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if it was jsut an instrument error, evaporation, or whatever else.
Also, I'm interested in their fuel economy in the real world as compared to what they expected.
Pretty Pictures!
I don't know, maybe I'm jaded, but these "record breaking" feats just don't seem to capture my attention or imagination. I have to think it would have been so exciting to have lived, say, a hundred years ago when these things were garnering world-wide attention and people like Lindberg became heroes. But nowadays, for whatever, reason... nothing. Nada. Zilch. Somewhat disappointed that I can't seem to get into this. Anyone else feel the same?
Wasn't Yuri Gagarin "the first person to successfully circle the earth in a nonstop solo flight" in Vostok 1, back in '61? Hyuk.
"Mother, should I run for President? Mother, should I trust the government?"
Dude.. We've been to the moon and have sent probes outside of our paltry little solar system. I'd say his reception was about right. The Frenchies only welcoemd Lindbergh as they did because he was the first to go solo across the Atlantic, a MAJOR feat at the time. Going around the world on one tank of gas isn't that incredible when compared to other recent achievements such as SpaceShip One and our Martian rovers.
What is your penile percentile?
This is a great accomplishment but am I the only one who is suspicious of his "fuel problem"? Hardly anyone was paying attention to his flight when he took off and then all of the sudden he might not have enough fuel? The media is all over the story and giving hourly updates of the now doomed flight. It sounds like something Richard Branson would come up with. He's a sucker for the publicity stunts.
I'd be one of the first to congratulate him for his flight, but how do you define "Around the earth"?? Especially when:
a) He was 3000 km shy of the circumference at the equator.
b) I don't belive he made it into the southern hemisphere.
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-The whole "loss of fuel" thing was a huge publicity stunt that worked wonderfully. Oooh, the anxiety!
Article Link
"When asked if the Mission Control team had overplayed the seriousness of the fuel shortage, Branson replied: "Incredibly, the thing is, in life truth is often stranger than fiction."
Branson said he had expected the flight would either be disastrous or boring but "everything that could have happened seems to have happened. There has been a lot of drama.""
(That was before the landing.)
I have to say that I was surprised to read that the record of longest distance by plane that he broke was set in 1962.
My initial thought was that one of the superpowers, America or Russia would have tried to show their supremecy with a record of that type. Especially with the Americans having the U2 and the SR-71.
I guess the space race superceded that type of bravado at that point.
"What the hell is an aluminum falcon?"
This is the same guy who did the first trip around the world in a balloon. He didn't land or refuel that time. So, isn't this his second trip around the world without refuelling?
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
"or whatever else."
I guess my theory of a publicity stunt would fall in that category.
Fix Your Own TV - RiddledTV.com Avoid the Landfill
For those of you who couldn't manage to scrape a connection to the live feed, and I know I had a lot of difficulty, I've put some images captures of the take off on Monday, the flight [1, 2] itself, the decent and of course the landing up on my blog.
The machine these are sitting on once hosted three front page Slashdot stories simultaneously so I'm not too worried about posting this... err, I think I'll just mail my sysadmin.
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
samll picky point. No B-52's in WW2. Those are whopper huge jets. B- 17s or 24's maybe. B-52s came much later, cold war years, got used in Nam a lot, etc. They still use them actually even though most of them are pretty old, they turned out to be a decent over all strong and useful design.
Fossett has a whole team in mission control who feed him navigational , weather , aircraft data and in constant communication with Fossett. All he doing up there is piloting the plane. They could have could have the plane of remote control and still made the trip. Fossett should lose his mission control , navigate around the world on his own. then proabably he can compared with Magellan.
Yes, they should take the shortest route around the world - just fly in a tight circle around the north or south pole!
Oh, that's cheating? OK, make sure the route takes in both hemispheres - start just south of the equator, head straight for the north pole, fly round it and back again. I'd be curious to know what the actual requirements are for "around the world".
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
That is quite a runway. I flew there as a student pilot in a Cessna 172 a long time ago. As I was taxing back (a long taxi) for takeoff the ground controller said things like "you can take off from taxiway Bravo and have 10,900 feet or taxiway Delta and have 8,500 feet", etc. I wanted to tell him with the crosswinds they had that day I could have taken off across the runway. It is 500 ft wide!
"Written on the pages is the answer to the never ending story..."
I wonder how big his piss can was?
IIRC, the USAF's U-2S high altitude reconnaissance aircraft piss can held about a quart.
Sometimes, if we were turning a jet for a second sortie the same day, the crew chief would forget to empty the can (thank God I was an avionics specialist!) after the first pilot had made his contribution. The second pilot would discover this oversight when his urine would fill the can and then back up the tube to overflow in his pressure suit, where it sloshed around for the remainder of the flight. . .
There is no facility for disposing of solid waste though. Every now and then a mission would abort because the pilot was suffering from "gastrointestinal distress." In the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron's (IYAABYAS!) ops shack, there is plaque high up on the wall, with a roll of toilet paper attached, commerating all those brave U-2 pilots who joined the exclusive "Stratoshitters Club." One guy's name was on there twice. . .
"I worked hard for it. I deserve it. And I have it," Campbell said. "It's all mine."
But were you ever cleared to have two aircraft landing on the same runway at the same time (and not in formation, either)?
Machrihanish airfield, in Scotland, has a 10,000+ ft runway. I was cleared to land (based on the "normal" threshold), while one of my colleagues, who was practising precision landings, was cleared to land using the control tower (about two thirds of the way up) as a touch down point
"She's furniture with a pulse"
"Plane design? Nope - sorry, it's a disguarded (due to being ponitless comercially) 15 year old design (just he was the first to come up with the cash to build it)
Faster speeds? Nope - it flies comparitively slowly in relation to virtually every other aircraft on the planet. Most 1960's helicopters travel faster."
The military has great interest in a plane the can fly for a long time very slowly.
UAV's I believe.
Although I doubt that has much commercial potential... it's still useful to some.
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
I caught a news article about Northrop testing their "surrogate" (still has a pilot during development) Medium Altitude Long Endurance UAV. The plane is being developed with, you guessed it, Scaled Composites. Here's a picture.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Voyager had to follow different rules that included equator crossings. Libya almost scuttled the attempt by refusing access to their airspace(Less than a year after Reagan sent in the F-111s and killed Ghaddafi's infant daughter). To reduce the chances of politics interfering the rules were relaxed to allow more flexible overland routing. (China also fucked with a balloon flight as well)
I doubt the plane needs the full two-mile runway length. He may have taken off in the first mile and landed in the second mile.
I haven't actually flown to EAA's Airventure at OshKosh myself, but don't they do that during the Expo week? I.e. "Aircraft A, Cleared to land Runway 2-7 on the blue dot, Aircraft B, Cleared to land Runway 2-7 on the Red dot, Aircraft C, Cleared to land Runway 2-7 on the Green Dot."
4 .p df
Ah, yes. Here it is, The Wittman NOTAM, page 10. Except I got the colors wrong, its White, Green, and Orange.
http://www.airventure.org/2004/flying/notam_200
--Carlos V.
--Carlos V.