Record quest under way

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – After a white-knuckle takeoff, millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett soared out over the Atlantic in a bony-looking experimental airplane Wednesday on a quest to break the 25,000-mile record for the world’s longest aircraft flight.

Fossett squeezed into the tiny cockpit, kissed his wife goodbye and set out on the planned, 31/2-day nonstop journey, taking off from the Kennedy Space Center on a nearly three-mile runway that is normally used by space shuttles when they return to Earth.

His plane, the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer, is made of lightweight carbon fiber and has a super fuel-efficient turbofan jet engine with a very high thrust-to-weight ratio.

The takeoff was free of technical problems like the major fuel leaks that had plagued Fossett’s nonstop solo flight around the globe last year and prevented him from taking off on Tuesday. Still, there were some hair-raising moments.

Two seabirds hit his plane during takeoff but caused no damage, and the aircraft lifted off about 1,500 feet farther down the runway than expected. The temperature in the cockpit reached 130 degrees at one point, causing instruments to temporarily stop working, before it cooled off.

“Takeoff was a bit scary, to say the least,” Fossett, 61, said hours later in a statement issued by his flight team.

The birds apparently hit the leading edge of a wing and the nose of one of the fuel tanks, but those spots are well reinforced, said Jon Karkow, flight engineer.

Fossett’s goal is a nearly 27,000-mile trip, once around the world and then across the Atlantic again, with a landing Saturday outside London.

The 80-hour voyage would break the airplane distance record of 24,987 miles set in 1986 by the lightweight Voyager aircraft piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeanna Yeager, as well as the balloon record of 25,361 miles set by the Breitling Orbiter 3 in 1999.

Fossett in 2002 became the first person to fly solo around the globe in a balloon, and last March he became the first person to circle the Earth solo in a plane without stopping or refueling. That flight, also made in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer, lasted 67 hours.

Both that venture and the latest flight were financed by Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson.

Fossett went ahead with the trip despite jet streams that raised fears he might not make it to his destination of Kent, England.

“Mr. Fossett decided it was worth trying,” Karkow said. “He’d rather be flying than sitting on the ground waiting for a good day.”