Oxford News

Salina, Kansas — Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett took to the air over a Kansas cornfield Monday, heading east in his Global Flyer with what he hopes is enough fuel and diet milkshakes to circle the globe in 80 hours.

Fossett's fuel-laden plane took off into the fading twilight of a clear winter evening to the cheers of about 8,000 people who braved stiff winds and near-freezing temperatures to witness the takeoff.

"It's going to be a long night followed by two more really long nights," Fossett quipped moments before strapping himself into the cockpit of the single-engine jet that he hopes will carry him around the world without refueling.

Many members of his support staff in Global Flyer mission control were dubious that the gusty crosswinds that had buffeted the Salina Municipal Airport all day would die down in time for him to take off Monday.

But Fossett took a nap during the afternoon and then informed his wife that he was going to get into his silver flight suit.

"The winds haven't died, but they must die, so I'm going to get ready," he told her. And the dogged optimism that has help him earn more than a hundred world records in flying, soaring, sailing and ballooning was right again.

After waiting nearly a month for the right weather for departure, Fossett finally filed a flight plan Monday that would take him over Chicago, Detroit and across southeastern Canada. By dawn Tuesday morning he was expected to be out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Fossett wants to stay awake for the three-day flight, but may take occasional catnaps in the instrument-packed 3-foot-by-7-foot cockpit that will be his home.

If he dozes, alarms on board will alert him if the jet deviates from its course or if other problems occur.

To ease any personal discomfort, he plans to subsist entirely on diet milkshakes that he picked up at a local store.

When he's not watching the instrument panel, his view of the world below will be limited to four small portholes and a bubble-like canopy over the pilot's seat.

Richard Branson, the flamboyant founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, which is sponsoring the $2.5 million project, hailed the flight as "the greatest of aviation adventures by the greatest of aviation adventurers" — and wished, a little wistfully, that he were going himself.

If Fossett completes the 23,000-mile trip, he is expected to be back in Salina by early Thursday morning — a feat that would make him the first person to fly solo around the world without refueling.

"If I don't make it, hopefully it won't be a disastrous failure," Fossett said, leaving little doubt that if he and the aircraft survive, he would try again.

He made six attempts before becoming the first person to fly solo around the world in a balloon in 2002.

With the takeoff behind him, however, Fossett already has the riskiest part completed.

"He hasn't flown around the world yet, but 80 percent of the worrying is over," Branson said an hour after Fosset cleared the runway with 4,000 feet to spare.

As his Global Flyer lumbered down the 12,300-foot length of Runway 35 at Salina Municipal Airport late Monday evening, the "flying fuel tank" was laden with more than 19,000 pounds of jet fuel — more than 85 percent of the experimental plane's total weight.

The enormous proportion of fuel, which Global Flyer officials said was a record for any aircraft, forced Fossett to climb slowly as he headed east, taking two hours to reach the altitudes that commercial aircraft use regularly.

Fossett acknowledged being "a little nervous" about the takeoff, which he called the riskiest portion of the flight.

Aborting the flight on takeoff would almost certainly have damaged the plane's brakes and perhaps other parts of the lightweight carbon composite fiber craft.

Throughout the flight, Fossett will rely on a NASA satellite communications system to stay in touch by video as well as voice with his mission control center in Salina.

Although it is a temporary facility set up on the campus of Kansas State University at Salina, the center is a glitzy production — with a double bank of wall-to-wall computer monitors — that would make NASA envious.

Mission control director Kevin Stass, who has filled a similar role on other Fossett adventures, says the planning for this flight was smoother than earlier ones.

In the past, both Libya and China have balked at allowing overflights by strange aircraft or balloons.

But he said the only change required in this trip's final route was a detour around a newly restricted military air space in Algeria.

The flight plan calls for Fossett, cruising at speeds averaging about 300 miles an hour, to pass over the Madiera Islands on his way to North Africa.

The latest course, designed to conserve fuel by taking advantage of jet stream tail winds, will also take him over the Middle East, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Korea and Japan before heading out over the Pacific Ocean.

As it burns fuel, the Global Flyer will become lighter. By the end of the journey, in fact, it will be so light that Fossett could virtually coast home.

"If everything is going well," Fossett says, "I'll probably cut the engine back to idle over Alamosa, Colo., and glide to a landing."

Mike Toner writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: mtoner@ajc.com