The Scaled Composites Model 311 Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer (
registered N277SF) is an aircraft designed by
Burt Rutan in which
Steve Fossett first flew a solo nonstop airplane flight around the world in slightly more than 67 hours (2 days 19 hours) in 2005. The flight speed of set the world record for the fastest nonstop non-refueled circumnavigation, beating the mark set by the previous Rutan-designed
Voyager
Voyager may refer to:
Computing and communications
* LG Voyager, a mobile phone model manufactured by LG Electronics
* NCR Voyager, a computer platform produced by NCR Corporation
* Voyager (computer worm), a computer worm affecting Oracle ...
aircraft at 9 days 3 minutes with an average speed of .
The aircraft was owned by the pilot
Steve Fossett, sponsored by
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields.
Branson expressed ...
's
Virgin Atlantic airline, and built by Burt Rutan's company,
Scaled Composites. The two companies subsequently worked together on
Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The company i ...
.
In February 2006, Fossett flew the GlobalFlyer for the longest aircraft flight distance in history: .
Design and construction
![Virgin-globalflyer-040408-06cr](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Virgin-globalflyer-040408-06cr.jpg)
The GlobalFlyer was specifically designed to make an uninterrupted (non-refueled) circumnavigation of the globe with a single pilot. Unusual for a modern civil aircraft, the GlobalFlyer has only a single jet engine.
The GlobalFlyer has twin tail booms mounted outboard of a shorter central fuselage
nacelle
A nacelle ( ) is a "streamlined body, sized according to what it contains", such as an engine, fuel, or equipment on an aircraft. When attached by a pylon entirely outside the airframe, it is sometimes called a pod, in which case it is attached ...
. The pressurized
cockpit
A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft or spacecraft, from which a Pilot in command, pilot controls the aircraft.
The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the ...
is located in the front of the fuselage and provides of space in which the
pilot
An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...
sits. The single
turbofan
The turbofan or fanjet is a type of airbreathing jet engine that is widely used in aircraft engine, aircraft propulsion. The word "turbofan" is a portmanteau of "turbine" and "fan": the ''turbo'' portion refers to a gas turbine engine which ac ...
engine is mounted in an unusual position above the fuselage at a point several
feet
The foot ( : feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made ...
behind the
cockpit
A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft or spacecraft, from which a Pilot in command, pilot controls the aircraft.
The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the ...
, a similar arrangement to that on the
Heinkel He 162 and
Cirrus Vision SF50
The Cirrus Vision SF50, also known as the Vision Jet, is a single-engine very light jet designed and produced by Cirrus Aircraft of Duluth, Minnesota, United States.
After receiving deposits starting in 2006, Cirrus unveiled an aircraft mock ...
. The outboard booms contain large fuel tanks and end in tail surfaces, which are not cross-connected.
The aircraft is constructed of
carbon fiber reinforced plastic
Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (American English), carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (Commonwealth English), carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics, carbon-fiber reinforced-thermoplastic (CFRP, CRP, CFRTP), also known as carbon fiber, carbon compo ...
, the main structural member being a high-
aspect-ratio single-spar
wing
A wing is a type of fin that produces lift while moving through air or some other fluid. Accordingly, wings have streamlined cross-sections that are subject to aerodynamic forces and act as airfoils. A wing's aerodynamic efficiency is expres ...
of span. The wings are made of high-strength
composite material
A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...
s with the skin of the aircraft being a graphite/epoxy and
Aramid
Aramid fibers, short for aromatic polyamide, are a class of heat-resistant and strong synthetic fibers. They are used in aerospace and military applications, for ballistic-rated body armor fabric and ballistic composites, in marine cordage, ma ...
honeycomb. The use of lightweight materials permits the fuel (in 13 tanks) to compose 83% of the take-off weight.
The aircraft had an estimated
lift-to-drag ratio of 37. The
aerodynamic drag is so low that, even with the engine idling, the aircraft can only descend at a maximum of . Twin
drogue parachutes were used to slow the GlobalFlyer to landing speeds.
The earlier Voyager aircraft structure had been by necessity built so lightly that it significantly deflected under aerodynamic loading. Learning from this experience, Rutan designed the GlobalFlyer to have greater
stiffness
Stiffness is the extent to which an object resists deformation in response to an applied force.
The complementary concept is flexibility or pliability: the more flexible an object is, the less stiff it is.
Calculations
The stiffness, k, of a b ...
. A design using a single jet engine was chosen for the GlobalFlyer for increased reliability over piston engines and faster circumnavigation for the solo pilot.
The GlobalFlyer is designed to operate at high altitudes, where the air is colder, yet in-tank fuel heaters were not included in its design. There was some concern that the fuel might freeze if the aircraft used standard jet fuel. Therefore, the GlobalFlyer's
Williams International FJ44
The Williams FJ44 is a family of small, two-spool, turbofan engines produced by Williams International for the light business jet market. Until the recent boom in the very light jet market, the FJ44 was one of the smallest turbofans available ...
-3 ATW turbofan (which normally takes
Jet-A fuel), was re-calibrated to burn
JP-4
JP-4, or JP4 (for "Jet Propellant") was a jet fuel, specified in 1951 by the U.S. government (MIL-DTL-5624). Its NATO code is F-40. It is also known as avtag.
Usage
JP-4 was a 50-50 kerosene-gasoline blend. It had a lower flash point than JP-1, b ...
, which has a substantially lower freezing point.
First solo nonstop circumnavigation
![First solo non-stop round-the-world - route](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/First_solo_non-stop_round-the-world_-_route.png)
In January 2005, following solo test flights at
Mojave, California
Mojave (formerly Mohave) is an Unincorporated area, unincorporated community in Kern County, California, United States. Mojave is located east of Bakersfield, California, Bakersfield, and north of Los Angeles, at an elevation of . The town is ...
, by Chief Engineer Jon Karkow and pilot
Steve Fossett, Fossett moved the GlobalFlyer to the
Salina Municipal Airport
Salina Regional Airport , formerly Salina Municipal Airport, is three miles southwest of Salina, Kansas, United States. The airport is owned by the Salina Airport Authority. It is used for general aviation, with service by one passenger airline, ...
in
Salina, Kansas, where a recently resurfaced runway of would accommodate the anticipated long takeoff roll. The circumnavigation attempt was delayed until 28 February 2005 to obtain a weather forecast with low turbulence for the fragile GlobalFlyer and good tailwinds.
Mission Control was at the
Salina campus of Kansas State University, located adjacent to the Salina Municipal Airport.
A tailwind was essential to making the that it needed to fly to meet the
FAI’s definition of circumnavigation, the length of the
Tropic of Cancer
The Tropic of Cancer, which is also referred to as the Northern Tropic, is the most northerly circle of latitude on Earth at which the Sun can be directly overhead. This occurs on the June solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward ...
. The GlobalFlyer was designed to complete the circumnavigation with minimal reserves of fuel. As it turned out, a design flaw in the fuel venting system resulted in the loss of about of fuel early in the flight. This forced Fossett and Mission Control to consider terminating the flight as it reached the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
near Japan. Fossett chose to delay the final decision until he reached Hawaii. By that time, favorable winds encouraged the mission team to attempt to complete the circumnavigation.
GlobalFlyer landed at Salina at 19:50
UTC (13:50
CST) on 3 March 2005, having completed its circumnavigation in 2 days, 19 hours, 1 minute and 46 seconds. , this is the fastest world trip in its class at a speed of . The distance flown was determined to be , only above the minimum distance required.
Longest distance aircraft flight (2006)
![Steve Fossett in GlobalFlyer cockpit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Steve_Fossett_in_GlobalFlyer_cockpit.jpg)
Fossett planned a second circumnavigation in the GlobalFlyer in 2006, this time taking off from the
Kennedy Space Center
The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968 ...
in
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, flying eastbound around the world then crossing the Atlantic a second time and then landing at
Manston Airport in
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
, England.
The objective was to break the Absolute Distance Without Landing Record for airplanes and to exceed the longest distance by any kind of aircraft which was achieved by the
Round the World Balloon flight of
Bertrand Piccard
Bertrand Piccard FRSGS (born 1 March 1958) is a Swiss explorer, psychiatrist and environmentalist. Along with Brian Jones, he was the first to complete a non-stop balloon flight around the globe, in a balloon named Breitling Orbiter 3. He was t ...
and
Brian Jones in 1999.
On 8 February 2006 at 12:22 UTC, GlobalFlyer took off and flew eastbound from Kennedy Space Center, and landed after 76 hours, 45 minutes with an official distance of .
This distance set a new record for the longest aircraft flight in history, breaking the old records of in an airplane and in a balloon. The landing was made at
Bournemouth Airport
Bournemouth Airport (previously known as Hurn Airport and Bournemouth International Airport) is an airport located north-northeast of Bournemouth, in southern England. The site opened as RAF Hurn in 1941, but was transferred to civil cont ...
, England (short of the planned destination at Kent), because of a generator failure at . Generator failure meant that Fossett had about 25 minutes until his batteries were exhausted, when he would have lost all electrical power. To add to the drama, ice on the inside of the canopy made vision difficult, with his landing being made virtually blind; one tire was flat from the takeoff roll and the remaining main tire burst on touchdown due to frozen brakes; and the fuel remaining was indicated to be only .
The aircraft survived the landing, with minor damage including a broken aileron hinge and a jammed intake valve.
Closed-circuit distance flight and retirement
Fossett flew the GlobalFlyer to one more major aviation record: the absolute distance over a closed circuit. A closed-circuit record must take off and land at the same place, and the distance is measured over verifiable waypoints.
Dick Rutan and
Jeana Yeager
Jeana Lee Yeager (born May 18, 1952) is an American aviator. She co-piloted, along with Dick Rutan, the first non-stop, non-refueled flight around the world in the Rutan Voyager aircraft from December 14 to 23, 1986. The flight took 9 days, 3 m ...
had already flown the
Voyager
Voyager may refer to:
Computing and communications
* LG Voyager, a mobile phone model manufactured by LG Electronics
* NCR Voyager, a computer platform produced by NCR Corporation
* Voyager (computer worm), a computer worm affecting Oracle ...
around the world in 1986, so a longer closed circuit course was needed to break their record. Fossett started in
Salina, Kansas, on March 14, 2006, and flew eastbound around the world. Upon leaving
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
, he flew south and then tracked along the
Equator
The equator is a circle of latitude, about in circumference, that divides Earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the North and South poles. The term can als ...
in order to maximize the distance while crossing the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
. He landed in Salina on March 17 after traversing a total of to set a new absolute distance over a closed circuit record.
FAI Record ID #13236 - Distance over a closed course
''FAI''. Retrieved 18 September 2014.
With this final record, the GlobalFlyer had set three of the seven absolute world records of airplanes as ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale
The (; FAI; en, World Air Sports Federation) is the world governing body for air sports, and also stewards definitions regarding human spaceflight. It was founded on 14 October 1905, and is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. It maintai ...
. The GlobalFlyer is now on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.[
]
Specifications
See also
* Concorde
The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde () is a retired Franco-British supersonic airliner jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC).
Studies started in 1954, and France an ...
holds the fastest refuelled circumnavigation
References
External links
Scaled Composites home page
SC Global Flyer page
GlobalFlyer Live Flight Tracking (archived)
"Fossett launches record attempt"
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
– March 1, 2005
"Steve Fossett and Burt Rutan's Ultimate Solo: Behind the Scenes" (archived)
(from ''Popular Mechanics'')
GlobalFlyer
at National Air and Space Museum
The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, also called the Air and Space Museum, is a museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States.
Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, it opened its main building on the Nat ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Virgin Atlantic Globalflyer
2000s United States experimental aircraft
Scaled Composites
Twin-boom aircraft
Individual aircraft in the Smithsonian Institution
Rutan aircraft
Virgin Atlantic
Aircraft first flown in 2005
Single-engined jet aircraft