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Technology Science

GlobalFlyer Aims To Go Voyager One Better 104

Posted by timothy from the round-and-round dept.
LucidBeast writes "We all remember Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world in 1986 on one tank of gas. Now Voyager pilot Steve Fossett plans to do it solo with a jet powered GlobalFlyer. See also New York Times article about it (registration required). The idea of the solo flight according to this story originated with the Voyager builder Dick Rutan." Update: 12/01 13:25 GMT by T : Note, the original submission reversed the roles of Rutan and Fossett; Fossett is the pilot, while Rutan (and his company, Scaled Composites) is the builder.
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GlobalFlyer Aims To Go Voyager One Better More

GlobalFlyer Aims To Go Voyager One Better

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  • Article rewrite (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mj_1903 ( 570130 ) * on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @08:16AM (#10962221)
    We all remember Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world in 1986 on one tank of gas. Now Voyager builder Burt Rutan plans to do it solo with the jet powered GlobalFlyer. This is the same Burt Rutan who also built the X Price Winner SpaceShipOne. See also New York Times article about it (registration required). The idea of the solo flight according to this story originated with the Voyager pilot Dick Rutan. Please fact check your articles before posting.
    • I was just about to say that, steve fossett hasn't build Voyager
    • I hate to reply to my own posts, but did a Slashdot editor look at this? Not only was there the spelling error, "Price" but there was the complete and utter factual mistake with Fosset being named as the creator of SpaceShipOne. You would think that Burt Rutan would also be a household name on Slashdot, did Timothy even read it before posting it?
      • Since when have editors fact checked anything that is submitted? At least this one didn't have some completely irrelevant MS bias as the center of the summery. Thats why you always have to take anything you read on /. with a whole bucket full of salt.
    • Great, now it implies Steve Fosset was the pilot of Voyager. The pilots of the record-breaking flight, according to wikipedia [wikipedia.org] were (Burt's brother) Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager.

  • Fossett built.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Trackster ( 761525 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @08:23AM (#10962261) Journal
    This little bugger [fossettchallenge.com]

  • Eh? (Score:5, Informative)

    by avidday ( 671814 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @08:23AM (#10962264)
    Wanna try again?

    Steve Fosset is a millionaire balloonist who eventually made it around the globe after about 4 failed attempts. He had exactly nothing to do with the X-Prize winner AFAIK.

    Burt Rutan is an aeronautical engineer and the the brains behind Scaled Composites who built the X-Prize winning SpaceShip One and the Voyager.

    Dick Rutan is Burt Rutan's brother and he piloted Voyager around the globe non-stop in 1986.

    • Re:Eh? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @09:01AM (#10962495)
      As long as we're at it, I might point out that while Burt designed Voyager, and his company Scaled Composites is the builder of record, that doesn't mean that Dick didn't build it as well.

      He may well still be scraping expoy out from underneath his fingernails. As may be Jeanna.

      One of the remarkable aspects of the Voyager story is the way they invested years of their lives "home" building the sucker with their own hands, and often the hands of any sucker who happened to be wandering by.

      KFG

    • Re:Eh? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Muad'Dave ( 255648 )

      And Bob Fosse was a choreographer [nodanw.com].

    • And Jeanna Yeager was Dick's co-pilot. She piloted Voyager while Dick slept and vice-versa. Nice of all you fellows to completly forget about a woman who was as integral to the team as Burt and Dick.
    • Check your facts. Man this site is just plain pathetic.

      "Tenacious in his quest to become the first person to achieve the First Solo Balloon Flight Round the World, Steve finally succeeded in his 6th attempt in the 'Bud Light Spirit of Freedom' (19 June - 4 July 2002)." (http://www.stevefossett.com/html/main_pages/crew. html)

  • How to stay awake? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @08:25AM (#10962279) Homepage
    According to the site, the flight will take 80 hours. How does the pilot plan to stay awake that long?

    My guess would be amphetamines, which are supposed to be reasonably safe in a small and short term dose. I wonder if it's legal though? Special permits?

    Disclaimer: I have no practical experience with amphetamines nor any real knowledge on how safe they really are.

    • Re:How to stay awake? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mj_1903 ( 570130 ) * on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @08:28AM (#10962286)
      From memory the pilot will be allowed to take naps on the flight. The aim with the jet was to allow it to fly high enough that it could reach the jet stream which would also take it over most of the turbulence. This will allow him to take naps of potentially up to an hour and if there is an issue that he needs to take care of, mission control will easily be able to wake him.

      • Re:How to stay awake? (Score:3, Informative)

        by anum ( 799950 )
        He will be able to sleep, maybe:
        "He said the autopilot was coming along as Jon M. Karkow, the project engineer and main test pilot, got more experience with the plane, but added, "If I'm having trouble with the autopilot, then I will absolutely not fall asleep."

        But my favorite quote:
        "If it quits at 45,000 feet, or about 9 miles, finding a landing spot is probably not a problem, because it can glide about 30 feet for each one foot loss in altitude, giving it a range of nearly 300 miles before the pilot woul
        • fly inverted! not sure how pleasant that would be for a pilot with low oxygen, but the blood rush to the head might just work in his favour.
        • But the GlobalFlyer is such a wonderful glider that it would be a challenge to descend fast enough to find breathable air."

          Can you imagine the panic in trying to get a plane to go down fast enough that you can breathe but not so fast that you lose control. Glad that's not me then...

          I'm a licensed glider pilot. There are a few tricks that can be used to lose altitude rapidly in a high-glide-ratio aircraft such as this. The simplest is plain-old spoilers. The SGS 2-32s we learned on had mechanically ope
      • The most obvious solution is some sort of manually-controlled thumbtack in the pilot's seat that jabs him when an appropriate button is pressed at mission-control...

        But seriously, hope he's not a deep sleeper:-)
    • Caffeine patches???
      (Or have I been reading UF to much?)

      Jeroen
      • Why not just implant the memory of flying solo around the world in a jet - as a secret agent?

        (Too many Arnie movies)
        • Why not just implant the memory of flying solo around the world in a jet - as a secret agent?

          (Too many Arnie movies)

          Too many Philip K Dick books for me.

          I'm getting the strangest feeling that somebody's watching me....
    • The Global Hawk [af.mil] has the ability to fly nearly half way around the world WITHOUT a pilot. So this guy's claim to fame will be that he did it solo? It seems to me that with the right equipment, he could spend to whole flight taking pictures out the window or sleeping. Won't this claim will be rather pointless given the current state of technology?

    • Re:How to stay awake? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jameth ( 664111 )
      Amphetamines are legal over international waters, somewhere I expect he will be spending a lot of time.

      However, I suspect good-old-fashioned sleep will be the solution he uses.


    • My favorite, M&Ms plus Punja's ISO accredited Ceylon tea [punjas.com].
      It's the BEST breakfast tea I've found in 30+ years of tea drinking.

    • In addition to the autopilot already mentioned, he might do well to get his hands on some Provigil [wired.com].
    • I've done 100+ hours with only caffeine. Of course at one point we were using caffinated water to make espresso but it IS possible without illegal drugs =) amphetamine sulphate would work and would have a low risk of side effects (though addiction does occour in a fairly significant percentage of user it does not usually occour with a low number of uses).
    • For all you know, the pilot flying your 747 could be taking naps. The average amount of time a pilot actually flies the plane these days is around 30 minutes, regardless of actual flight time. Autopilot does the rest! :-)

      The only reason we still have pilots is because 1. if something does go wrong, they can handle it better than a computer. (Although that will probably become false in the near future) And 2. people would freak out if it were just a computer flying the plane. They want to believe that a

  • what an ambition (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Plugoor ( 655762 )
    first the universe and then the earth!

  • Who is Steve Fossett ? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    quick primer here [wikipedia.org]

  • steve fossett had nothing to do with SS1 (Score:5, Informative)

    by gonar ( 78767 ) <.ten.nozirev. .ta. .suoicilakraps.> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @08:31AM (#10962318) Homepage
    steve fossett is the round the world balloon guy.

    burt rutan is the ss1 guy, and the voyager guy _and_ the guy building the Global Flyer. at the time of the voyager flight, the original concept was for a jet, or at least a turboprop, but at the time, those engine choices would not provide the kind of fuel economy necessary.

    dick rutan and jeanna yeager flew the voyager.

    the global flyer is being paid for by the Virgin CEO Richard Branson.


  • Speed vs. fuel consumption? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alwin Henseler ( 640539 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @08:51AM (#10962432)
    Just wondering: given a certain design, isn't the fuel consumption very dependent on speed? From what I understand, there's some exponential relation between speed and air drag. Like, go 2x as fast, 2^something more drag.

    When you fly around the world on one tank of gas, I'd think a crucial issue is to maximise the distance/fuel ratio. Given above exponential relation, it seems to me, flying slow would help. I remember NASA built some solar-powered, high-flying plane once, that could stay airborne for very long (effectively indefinite if parts kept working). I also remember that thingie was flying at relative low speed, presumably for same reason.

    If you go too slow, you'll drop out of the sky (duhhh...). If you go fast, you need less time but burn fuel like crazy. Also, for slow flying you might need more wing surface, read: increase the weight of the aircraft. So where's an optimum here? Anyone got some (informed) insights?

    • I think the force exerted by drag is proportional to the square of the speed. Therefore the total fuel requirement would also be proportional to the square of the speed, although the instantaneous fuel requirement will be propotional to the cube of the speed.
      • Therefore the total fuel requirement would also be proportional to the square of the speed.

        You're forgetting the fact that faster aircraft fly higher where the air is thinner and drag is decreased.

        At, say, 50,000 feet, you can travel with a ground speed of 400 MPH while only incurring the drag you'd expect at 200 MPH at sea level. Sure, it's only details, but as long as we're doing calculations, let's get the right numbers.

        • Right, but at a given air density, I'm pretty sure the v^2 relation holds. An airspeed of 400MPH would have 4x as much drag as you'd experience at an airspeed of 200MPH at the same altitude. So, you're both right--you just have to name which variables you're changing. :-)

          --Joe
        • Not sure how relevent this is , but someone else might be able to expand on this...

          During WW2 there was a need to make flights from the West Coast of Australia, all the way over to India, now this isnt such a big deal these days .. but with the planes they were using then, it was..

          Basicly to get the range needed they did some funky calculations and it ended up working something like this.

          2 hours @ 15000 Feet @ 3000 RPM
          2 hours @ 17000 Feet @ 2900 RPM
          2 Hours @ 18000 Feet @ 2800 RPM

          and so on, basicly as th
    • I'm sure with the right equations and about three hours I could find it. But you have to remember, drag is proportional to the cross-section area of the plane. A long, skinny plane with long, thin, narrow wings has lower drag than a short, wide plane with stumpy wings.

      Or as Burt said: "You can take a lot of air and move it a little, or a little air and move it a lot. The former is very efficient, but not powerful, and the latter is the opposite."

    • Re:Speed vs. fuel consumption? (Score:4, Informative)

      by PhloppyPhallus ( 250291 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @09:27AM (#10962679)
      Well, it's not just that. What happens in an airplane in that as you decrease your speed, you are required to increase your angle of attack to provide sufficient lift to remain aloft. Now, as AoA increases, induced drag (the component of wing lift that is now pointing backwards) increases, thus reducing effciency. So, what you have are basically two drag components, parasitic drag, which increases by the exponential power of velocity, as given in your post, and induced drag, which increases inverse to velocity. At some point these drag-velocity curves intersect at a minimum drag speed, which is approximately the speed of best effciency, generally designed to be the cruise speed.

      Another factor is thrown into the mix with non-constant (wrt velocity) thrust in jet engines. Jet engines are designed for best performance in an optimal speed range, and produce poor thrust from a standstill, but are incapable of functioning at a certain maximum speed limit (due to internal shock effects). For a generic jet engine, the efficiency curve peaks at about M=.8,.9 quickly plummets at M=1, and then climbs to it's best value at M=3, then decreases until M=5 or so, where operation becomes impossible. This is why most subsonic airliners fly in the region of M=.8 to M=.9.

      At any rate, the point is that slower is definately not better when it comes to airplane effciency, particularly with regard to jet engines, which have optimal operating speeds.

    • Re:Speed vs. fuel consumption? (Score:5, Informative)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @09:36AM (#10962749) Homepage Journal
      "If you go too slow, you'll drop out of the sky (duhhh...). If you go fast, you need less time but burn fuel like crazy. Also, for slow flying you might need more wing surface, read: increase the weight of the aircraft. So where's an optimum here? Anyone got some (informed) insights?"

      It is more complex than that. Every airplane has an speed that is the best lift to drag ratio. It is usually very close to best climb speed. Below that speed you have to increase the angle of attack of the wing too much and you get a lot of drag. This also is very dependent on altitude as well as the air gets thinner the optimal speed increases. For some aircraft like the U2 family the stall speed, optimal speed, and max mach number can come very close to converging. And that can be bad.
      Yes as you are right that as you increase the wing area you increase the weight but you also can increase the drag from the extra wetted area. Now if you increase the aspect ratio of the wing "make it longer and thinner" you will decrease the induced drag but then the weight can go up and that increases the induced drag. Everything on an airplane is a compromise. The trick is to find the best compromise for the job. Frankly Burt Rutan is very very very good at that.

  • Voyager pilots (Score:5, Informative)

    by PseudonymousCoward ( 161283 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @09:21AM (#10962635)
    The point of the GlobalFlyer is a SOLO non-stop round-the-world flight. So it seems the right time to mention that the Voyager non-stop round-the-world flight was piloted by two people: Dick Rutan and Jeanna Yeager.

  • SOLAR powered round the world flight... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sai Babu ( 827212 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @09:27AM (#10962686) Homepage
    NASA had a real cool solar powered plane. Helios RIP (shall rise again) [california...center.org] was unmanned but could stay up for weeks.

    Bertrand Piccard [universetoday.com] will be having a go at round the world solar powered flight. "...70-metre wingspan (larger than a Boeing 747)..."

    Bertrand's the dude who just wouldn't give up and got around the world in a balloon [speakers.co.uk] in 1999.

  • BBC article with pictures. (Score:5, Informative)

    by TigerNut ( 718742 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @09:31AM (#10962718) Homepage Journal
    BBC Link [bbc.co.uk] to an article that has a partial picture of the beast. Not slashdotted ... yet.

  • Choice of propulsion (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bjomo ( 832719 )
    Scramjet anyone?
  • He's going to fly around the world on half a tank of gas.
  • http://www.virginatlanticglobalflyer.com/ [virginatla...lflyer.com] is slashdotted. Info here http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/GlobalFl yer [thefreedictionary.com]

  • Speaking of such flights.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @09:55AM (#10962916)
    ...I wonder why Boeing didn't consider trying to fly around the world non-stop on a 747SP back in the early 1980's? A 747SP fully fuelled up and also loaded with the equivalent of a full passenger/cargo load in fuel probably could have come close if they used pre-cooled JP4 fuel.

    • I wonder why Boeing didn't consider trying to fly around the world non-stop on a 747SP back in the early 1980's? A 747SP fully fuelled up and also loaded with the equivalent of a full passenger/cargo load in fuel probably could have come close if they used pre-cooled JP4 fuel.

      From almost TFA:

      GlobalFlyer is an airplane with world-class aerodynamic efficiency that will be 82-percent fuel by weight when it takes off. Responding to a reporter's question, Rutan said that a Boeing 747 with 82-percent of its

    • Re:Speaking of such flights.... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The full passenger load of a 747 would be around 200 pounds per passenger x 500 passengers, or about 100,000 pounds. I don't think this is enough additional fuel to get around the world. I remember asking the pilot of a LAX - Sydney flight how much fuel he expected to have on landing, and he said about 20K pounds, something like 1.5 hours cruising. Using that equivalency, you could infer that you need 13.3 K per hour, times 50 hours, or about 670K pounds to make it all the way around. Don't think any 74

      • Also, don't forget that you burn fuel faster when you're carrying more of it. Even if you could get off the ground with that much fuel, you'd be burning it at a much higher rate than near the end of the flight.

        --Joe
      • Mmm... he mentioned 747SP. For the longest time, the longest unrefueled flight in Guinness BoR was for a 747SP flight. they loaded it with chilled JP4. It flew some insane route, and IIRC, it landed in Johannesburg, ZA.

        The 747SP is a "chopped" 747-200. It's fuselage is a good amount shorter than a regular 747, but the wing size etc. is the same. It was ordered for some of the longer flights (i.e., NY-Johannesburg, LA-Sydney, etc).
    • The stripped an early 747-400 bare, loaded as much fuel as possible, and just about got it from London to Australia. I think an around the globe trip is definitely out of the question.
    • IIRC Boeing did fly a 747 SP delivery flight from Seattle to Johannesburg, South Africa, however far that is (12000 or so miles?) with pre-cooled fuel and multiple crews. It was in the Guinness Book of World Records as longest unrefuelled flight, until eclipsed by Voyager.
  • Well I guess we shouldn't be so hard on those that post comments without reading the articles apparently nobody working for slashdot reads them either... What do they pay there, minimum wage?

    Lets straighten this out...

    Burt Rutan: Designer of Voyager and GlobalFlyer (and Spaceship1 in case you haven't heard)

    Dick Rutan: Pilot of Voyager, brother of Burt Rutan; leaves aircraft designing to his brother.

    Steve Fossett: Pilot of GlobalFlyer, didn't pilot Voyager; professional record-breaker on land sea and air
  • cant you just take a large commercial jet, take all the weight taken up by the hundreds of passengers and their luggage and replace it with fuel? that should easily provide more than enough "juice" to get around the world at least once...
  • Dick: Dad, I just flew an airplane around the world on a single tank of gas, aren't you pround. Dad: Quiet Dick, your borther Burt is sending a man into space.

    Me: I know, I know, I am sure they are all one big happy family!
  • Damn I wish I was a billionaire and could do crazy crap like this.
  • Dick Rutan was the pilot of Voyager, not Burt.

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