2/8/2006 - Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer ‘THE ULTIMATE FLIGHT’ Enroute Update
CAPE CANAVERAL - Just after dawn today Steve Fossett took off from the space shuttle runway at Kennedy Space Center on a flight being billed as the longest nonstop journey in aviation history. Fossett now has 80 or more hours to spend in the cramped confines of the GlobalFlyer cockpit on the 26,000-plus mile mission ending in London. Steve Fossett is heading into night at 330kts, 1,425nm off the coast of Africa about 7 hours now into the flight.
Three hours after take off on the phone to Sir Richard Branson from the cockpit of the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer he said. "Take off was a bit scary to say the least, I had to use most of the runway to get off the ground. This was particularly hairy as I couldn't have aborted even if I had wanted to." To make matters worse two birds hit the aircraft on take off, luckily there doesn't seem to be any sign of damage.
'The climb was very physical for a time the internal temperatures hit approximately 130F. So hot that the instruments stopped working it was very uncomfortable for a time. Fortunately the internal temperatures stabilized to normal level and now I am just settling in to enjoy the view."
Jon Karkow, Launch Director, chief engineer commented, "We are happy with the take off and how the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer has performed in the first few hours of the flight. We had concerns about the tire wear on take off but observed no problems with the tires from the chase plane. The take off roll was longer than the 10,000ft we had originally predicted at 11,500ft and we will need to analyze the data to assess why this is. We were also keen to check there was no signs of a large scale fuel loss as with the last round the world attempt and can confirm that no fuel loss was visible. This has been verified from the data from mission control. We also looked for any signs of damage sustained from the two birds which hit the aircraft on take off and saw no evidence of any impact on the plane.
Our next concern is with the jet streams, as current predictions do not give us a lot of margin, it could be uncomfortably close. We will constantly monitor the jet streams throughout the flight.The pioneering aircraft - the world's most efficient jet plane is designed by aviation legend Burt Rutan.
See Updates: www.virginatlanticglobalflyer.com
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