CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Steve Fossett, this era’s Phileas Fogg, wants to do something not even the “Around the World in 80 Days” hero could contemplate: Fly around the globe – and then some – for more than three days without stopping.
His goal is to break a 20-year-old record for longest flight. He plans to travel 27,012 miles in a spindly experimental airplane that helped him break a different record last year.
During his 80 hours in the air, Fossett will take power naps no longer than five minutes each. He’ll drink a steady diet of nutritious milkshakes. And he’ll relieve himself using “pee bottles” and a plastic bag.
His flight is set for dawn today, depending on the weather. He will take off at a runway used to land space shuttles, head east, circumnavigate the world and continue over the Atlantic Ocean for a second time before landing outside London.
If successful, Fossett’s trip would surpass the previous airplane record of 24,987 miles set in 1986 by the Voyager aircraft piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeanna Yeager, as well as the balloon record of 25,361 miles set by the Breitling Orbiter 3 in 1999.
Fossett already has faced delays unrelated to weather or engineering. The takeoff was pushed back a few days because Chinese authorities were unable to issue the proper overflight permits during the Chinese New Year, and the plane’s movement to the Kennedy Space Center in January was delayed because of a mishap that damaged a wing.
Fossett, 61, a former Chicago investment tycoon, has a wellspring of patience. He failed five times before successfully circumnavigating the globe solo in a balloon in 2002.
This time, he plans to use the same plane, the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer, that he used in March when he became the first person to fly solo nonstop around the globe in 67 hours without refueling. As the plane’s name suggests, the venture is being financed by Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson.
The gliderlike aircraft with a 114-foot wing span has two external booms holding 5,454 pounds of fuel on either side of the 7-foot-long cockpit, which supports the engine. At takeoff, fuel is expected to account for 85 percent of the graphite-made aircraft’s weight. Drag parachutes are used to help it descend from its average flying height of about 45,000 feet, or slow it down from a top speed of 285 mph.
“When you have an aircraft like that, everything except the cockpit and the engine are basically a part of the fuel tank,” said Dick Knapinski, a spokesman for the Experimental Aircraft Association in Oshkosh, Wis.
“The engine can’t be too large, because then it would add extra weight, which would need extra fuel, which means you need a bigger airplane. It’s a fine line for the person doing the engineering.”
That person is Burt Rutan, who designed the Voyager airplane that his brother, Dick, and Yeager used to set the record almost two decades ago.
Two years ago, Burt Rutan won the $10 million Ansari X Prize by rocketing his SpaceShipOne to the edge of space twice in five days, a feat considered a breakthrough for the future of private spaceflight.
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