In preparation for his solo nonstop around-the-world (ATW) flight tentatively scheduled for January, adventurer and solo ATW balloonist Steve Fossett has begun familiarization flights in the single-engine Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer in Mojave, Calif., following a number of envelope expansion flights by Scaled Composites project engineer and test pilot Jon Karkow.
Designed by Burt Rutan and built by his crew at Mojave-based Scaled Composites, now most famous for the SpaceShipOne commercial manned spacecraft that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize last month, the GlobalFlyer is reminiscent of Rutan’s earlier nonstop ATW airplane, Voyager, in which his brother Dick and copilot Jeana Yeager circumnavigated the earth in nine days in 1986. Unlike Voyager, which had two piston engines, Global-Flyer uses a single Williams FJ44-3 jet engine as its powerplant. It will, however, require substantially more fuel for the expected 80-hour ATW trip than Voyager, 18,000 pounds compared with 7,010 pounds. At 81.8 percent, GlobalFlyer’s estimated ATW fuel-to-takeoff-weight ratio (also known as the fuel fraction) is much higher than Voyager’s 72.2 percent.
