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Well, Ok, since no one else has, I'm going to. My first attempt at Hatrack news.

This is a huge opportunity for my alma mater, Kansas State University at Salina. KSU-Salina is the 9th college of KSU, and contains the college of Technology and Aviation. They have students working on the crew, including aviation maintenance and mission control.

The airport in Salina has a main runway that's 12,337 feet long, and wide enough, you can just about land a Cessna 172 on the width alone. The aiport was originally built to handle B-52s when it was part of Schilling Airforce Base. I saw a wide variety of planes, living next to the airport for three years. F-16s and other fighter jets doing training missions out of the Smoky Hill Bombing range, in the southwest corner of Saline county, would stop for fuel or do other maneuvers around the airport. Lessee, a short list of other planes I've seen there: KC-135, A-10s (a whole flock of them ), ER-2 (NASA derivative of the U2), the Red Baron bi-planes, and the freaking Budweiser Blimp. The airport is huge and largely unused, so it attracts business lost to more crowded airports.

It's great to have this event in Kansas. It sucks to be working full-time, though, and living in Kansas City. I'll have to put up with internet news and KC media to see video.

Article Text: CNN Article

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SALINA, Kansas (AP) -- Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett launched his Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer aircraft on Monday evening at Salina Municipal Airport and hopes to land there again in about 65 hours. He is attempting to make the trip in a single-engine airplane without stopping -- an aviation first.

The 23,000-mile (37,000 kilometer) flight had already been postponed several times because of shifting jet stream patterns or weather at Salina.

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Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged | 

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Mr Fossett will spend the next two days in his 7.7ft cockpit in which he is severely cramped. He has been tucking into chocolate milkshakes as his only form of sustenance. But he will have little to distract him because for 20 per cent of the journey he will be flying in the dark, due to the fact that he is constantly heading east

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Posts: 440 | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged | 

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Mission Status: Steve says "Let's go for it!"

At 21:30CST (03:30UCT) Steve Fossett relayed by satellite phone to Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer Mission Control Director Kevin Stass "let's go for it". Strong tailwinds across the Pacific from the coast of Japan carried
Steve between 100knots -130knots from the coast of Japan to Hawaii, bringing the round-the-world non-stop circumnavigation world record back within his grasp.

Steve Fossett, commented: "I hit the jetstream very well which has put us in a better fuel position. I have every hope of making it to Salina tomorrow."

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Aiming for Salina landing, Thursday lunchtime

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Posts: 440 | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged | 

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Hang on...

The site is really busy right now, and we've had to put you on hold for a short while until some other people have got the information they need.

Some web statistics to keep you occupied whilst you wait:

Over the last year, we have averaged 40,000 hits per day on the site.

In the week before the attempt started, we had an average of 250,000 hits per day.

Day 1 - Up until take off we had 4 million hits on the GlobalFlyer website

Day 2 - In the 24 hours after take-off there were 11 million hits on the GlobalFlyer website

Day 3 - NASA reporting 1 million hits per hour being served from their image snapshot server. They have upgraded their web infrastructure to a cluster of Cray SuperComputers.
- 80 Megabits of data currentyly being served per second from the GlobalFlyer website

Thanks for your patience.

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Towns and Cities Steve should overfly:

Many of you are asking where you can see the GlobalFlyer. Here's our best estimate of where he will be when - all times are in UTC, which is EST +5 hours, CST +6 hours and PST +8 hours. This is still tentative, and of course subject to Steve's fuel and stamina holding out. Bear in mind that Steve will not descend from 45,000 feet until around 300 miles from Salina - you'll just have to watch out for that unique single condensation trail!

* Catalina Island @ 13:21 UTC (in the dark)
* Los Angeles, CA (South of) @ 13:36 UTC (in the dark)
* Kingman, AZ (North of) @ 14:32 UTC
* Farmington, NM @ 15:53 UTC
* Garden City, KS @ 17:56 UTC
* Salina, KS @ 18:53 UTC (13:53 local time)

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