Closed Circuit Distance Flight and Retirement
Steve 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 had already flown the Voyager 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 he flew south and then tracked along the Equator in order to maximize the distance while crossing the Pacific Ocean. He landed in Salina, Kansas on March 17, 2006 after traversing a total of 25,294 miles (40,707 km) to set a new Absolute Distance Over a Closed Circuit Record.
With this final record flight before retirement, the GlobalFlyer had set three of the seven absolute world records of airplanes as ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. The GlobalFlyer is now on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.
Read more about this topic: Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer
Famous quotes containing the words closed, circuit, distance, flight and/or retirement:
“For a long time, I went to bed early. Sometimes, my candle barely put out, my eyes closed so quickly that I did not have the time to say to myself: “I am falling asleep”.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“We are all hostages, and we are all terrorists. This circuit has replaced that other one of masters and slaves, the dominating and the dominated, the exploiters and the exploited.... It is worse than the one it replaces, but at least it liberates us from liberal nostalgia and the ruses of history.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”
—Nelson Mandela (b. 1918)
“Here I am.... You get the parts of me you like and also the parts that make you uncomfortable. You have to understand that other people’s comfort is no longer my job. I am no longer a flight attendant.”
—Patricia Ireland (b. 1935)
“Adultery itself in its principle is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envy of another man’s enclosed pleasures: and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor.”
—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)