Adventurer Plans Channel Flight In Radical Compression-Powered
Plane
04.01.05 Special
Edition: Steve Fossett holds records in jets, gliders, and
now, is the fastest man to fly an airplane around the world, and
the only one to do it solo. For anyone else, it might be time to
retire. For Fossett, it just means it's time to find a new
challenge.
In this case, the new challenge is to set distance and speed
records in a type of airplane that has never carried a human being
before.
"I don't know how Paul MacCready missed this one," Fossett told
Aero-News. "You'd think it would be right up his alley. But for
whatever reason he left rubber power on the table, and I'm going to
do it."
Unlike SpaceShipOne, which burned rubber in its revolutionary
hybrid rocket engine, Fossett's new record-breaker will use the
amazing elastic properties of natural and synthetic rubber, worked
into eighty-foot-long fibers by a German industrial firm. Wound up,
the fibers give the plane the equivalent of almost 800 horsepower
-- for 14 seconds. After that, Fossett and the craft glide to a
safe landing. To ensure that safe touchdown, the flight is expected
to take place somewhere where there is nothing of value to collide
with: the Great Plains, the Argentine pampas, an area of level
Arctic permafrost in Canada's Yukon territory, and Chicago are on
the shortlist.
The as-yet-unsponsored and -unnamed airplane is constructed of a
single long beam made of several Ecuadorian balsa tree trunks
carefully scarf-jointed by expert woodworkers. On this "fuselage"
sits a Trek bicycle seat, a pair of fixed handlebars, and a pair of
foot-pegs.
"They're actually from my Harley -- I won't be riding it till
later this season. Did you see that the pegs, and the handlebars,
are fixed?
It doesn't actually have control surfaces as we know them," Fossett
explained. "It's kind of weight-shift."
"Hey -- don't look at me like that. Compared to plunging 25,000
feet into the Pacific under a deflated balloon, or flying around
the world without sleeping in seventy hours, this is a piece of
cake. Come to think of it, the no sleep in seventy hours is no big
deal either.
Freight dogs do it all the time!"
Aero-News wanted to know why the adventurer didn't continue his
productive partnership with Burt Rutan.
"Rutan's a bit peeved I didn't call him, but I wanted the chance
to work with nature's own composite," Fossett said, "and really,
Burt is the Stradivarius of the synthetic stuff." The designer of
the craft is Paul K. Guillow IV of Wakefield, Massachusetts. The
dream of rubber-powered flight has driven Guillow's family since
before Lindbergh's ascent to fame confirmed the supremacy of the
Otto-cycle internal-combustion engine, as first developed for
aviation by the Wrights.
Guillow's great-great-uncle, the first Paul, had actually
sketched an early version of Fossett's new machine before World War
II (above), but due to the exigencies of war production, the
drawings were set aside; they lay forgotten in the back of a dusty
company safe until 2003.
Guillow was not available for an interview; he had gone into
downtown Wakefield to get some wire and fishing sinkers.
Of course, such an
undertaking is very expensive. While Fossett is a successful,
wealthy man in his own right, he's always relied on sponsorship to
pull off these daring flights. If Branson doesn't sponsor the
flight, who will? "Heck, it could be anybody. Just not George Soros
and Warren Buffett. I just found out that they were short-selling
me with the oddsmakers in Vegas, and that doesn't sit right. But I
expect Sir Richard will come through. We haven't worked out the
sponsorship details yet, so I don't want to disclose anything
prematurely. It will NOT be the Virgin Latex though. Again, it's
not a lock that Sir Richard will sponsor this flight, but he has
promised me the loan of a pair of brawny footmen to wind the
elastic."