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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.
quote: 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.
It's a rather poor webpage design, but it links to a lot more information about the town. Information about Salina
Caution, this one is overloaded; there was talk of some streaming video: GlobalFlyer website Some custom crop art to celebrate the occasion: Crop artPosts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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You might, just might, get a shot of it on the news tonight. I know the local CBS affiliate got footage of the launch, but I think it happened after dark, so I'm not sure how good it was.
Finally, a good reason to watch the 10 o'clock news.
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He's over Morroco now -- made it across the Atlantic in good shape.... still going................
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quote: 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
The Times Online
I wonder if he takes along music or something?
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I don't know -- but I had been following this all day long via his website. But the site just went down a short bit ago and hasn't come back up. I hope that isn't a bad thing -- because he was flying over Libya at the time.
...and I was thinking "how did he get permission to go over Libyan airspace?"...
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I don't think any country has prohibited his flight over their airspace. In fact, even countries that prevented his flight in a baloon over their airspace have allowed this flight.
The last I heard everything was fine. I, too, hope this is the case.
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There was a great picture of the globalflyer plane on the frontpage of the Kansas City Star today, silhouetted against the kansas sunset. I didn't have much luck looking for a digital copy.
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Looks like he's over the Pacific now, just past Japan. There's an intercept plane scheduled to meet him near Honolulu.
In the rumor mill, I've heard that John Travolta will be in Salina when Fossett lands. Not that it's unusual for celebrities to stop in Salina, because it's actually quite common. It's out of the way, and the people aren't star-struck like other cities, so they seldom get lots of attention.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote: 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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I'll do my best to check up on the globalflyer from work, but I can't come to Hatrack, for obvious reasons.
Their website is taking a beating, but I like their busy sign:
quote: 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
Wish I was where I could see him fly over (but since he's at 47,000 feet, I guess I would need a telescope or something.
quote: 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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Awesome! I didn't get to watch it in person, but I'll settle for catching the news stories/video footage from 3 stations. They say this little plane is headed for the Smithsonian, but here I am, reduced to looking at footage, hoping to see people I know.
Now, I'm hoping to get my hands on some pictures. Surely someone there took photos, besides CNN.
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I might be taking my mother in law to DC this summer, and it would be really cool if that plane was there when we went to the Air and Space museum.
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Ah, Mr.Squicky, most folks know that Kansas is an imaginary place invented to contrast with Oz. An imaginary plane taking off from and landing in an imaginary airport in an imaginary state. Wonderful how well they do ComputerGraphicImaging nowadays. Betcha not even the Wizard could have pulled it off.