Around the world in 80 hours
Adventurer Fossett seeks solo plane record
(CNN) -- Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett hopes to set the "last great aviation record" by piloting an airplane alone around the world without refueling or stopping.
Originally scheduled to launch on February 2, unsatisfactory weather has prompted mission planners to delay the flight several times.
On February 28 or March 1, weather permitting, the 60-year-old retired investor plans to board the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer in Salina, Kansas, and begin his journey toward Europe and the Middle East, over Asia and the Pacific, and back to Kansas.
He's already proved himself to be a modern-day Magellan. In 2002, Fossett became the first solo balloonist to circle the globe nonstop, despite an on-board fire and dangerous winds. Two years later, he and his crew made the fastest circumnavigation on a sailing ship -- 58 days.
Fossett holds dozens of aviation and nautical records, including the fastest flight of a nonsupersonic airplane -- 742.02 mph (1,193.9 kph).
On the water, he and his crew in 2001 smashed the transatlantic sailing record by 43 hours, finishing in a little more than four days.
For this latest challenge, Fossett and his mission control team at Kansas State University face a tricky triple threat: weather, sleep deprivation and conserving precious fuel.
The GlobalFlyer consists of three hulls attached to a 114-foot (35-meter) wing that measures more than half the wingspan of a Boeing 747. Twin "boom" hulls on either side of the cockpit hull each carry almost 5,500 pounds of fuel. The plane is expected to reach heights of 52,000 feet (17,000 meters) and travel at speeds in excess of 250 knots (285 mph, 440 kph).
Atop the plane's 7-foot cockpit is a single jet engine, which must propel the aircraft throughout its 25,000-mile trek.
"The first solo nonstop is a grand endeavor," said Fossett. "If successful, I hope to earn a place in aviation history in the legacy of Wiley Post." In 1933, Post rounded the globe after stopping eleven times in just under eight days. Fossett wants to finish -- without stopping -- in under 80 hours.
Fossett has partnered with two men whose experience may be invaluable to the mission: fellow adventurer and Virgin Atlantic chief Sir Richard Branson and aircraft designer Burt Rutan, whose plane Voyager launched brother Dick Rutan and co-pilot Jeana Yeager around the world without refueling in 1986.
Soloing around the globe in a plane is now "the last great aviation record left inside the Earth's atmosphere," Branson said when the mission was announced in 2003.
In fact, Branson and Rutan know something about the far reaches of the atmosphere. Last year Rutan led the first manned commercial flight to reach the edge of space and was commissioned by Branson to build a spacecraft for paying passengers -- possibly within five years.
The October flight of Rutan's SpaceShipOne won his team the $10 million X Prize, an award from a nonprofit foundation aimed at spurring civilian space flight.
The prize was offered to the first manned flight to return safely from two trips 62 miles (100 km) high into suborbital space.
