Progress
Phase one of the project was to climb well past the tropopause, into an increasingly strong wave in the stratosphere, not to exceed 62,000 feet (18,900 meters). The record flight of 29 August 2006, which extended 17,000 feet into the stratosphere, accomplished this goal. It was not clear that that wave was increasing in strength, but it was certainly not decreasing. The climb was terminated due to several small but, cumulatively, significant practical difficulties encountered in operating the sailplane in inflated pressure suits. Modeling of the wave showed good agreement with the flight-measured atmospheric motions, and showed the wave increasing strongly at progressively higher altitudes.
Because the record flight of 29 August 2006 proved Enevoldson's thesis, Steve Fossett agreed to fund, progressively, the next phase of the project: to build a pressurized cabin for a special sailplane to fly to 90,000 feet. At the time of Steve's death on 3 September 2007, the structural and aerodynamic design of the fuselage had been completed, along with the aerodynamic design of the entire sailplane. Funding for the remainder of the Perlan Project was lost with Steve's death, and a search for new funding was begun.
Einar Enevoldson reported in September 2008 that Morgan Sandercock, an experienced sailplane pilot from Australia, has provided funds to re-start the project. It is funding enough to complete the fuselage with pressure cabin and do the structural tests on it. Additional funds will be needed to get back to Patagonia in the Southern Hemisphere winter of 2011.
In June of 2010 Dennis Tito joined the perlan Project as a pilot and major funder.
Read more about this topic: Perlan Project
Famous quotes containing the word progress:
“Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature. Progress makes purses out of human skin. When people were traveling in mail coaches, the world got ahead better than it does now that salesmen fly through the air. What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way? How will the heirs of this age be taught the most basic motions that are necessary to activate the most complicated machines? Nature can rely on progress; it will avenge it for the outrage it has perpetrated on it.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
“As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the progress of the character, there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in propositions.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A woman who occupies the same realm of thought with man, who can explore with him the depths of science, comprehend the steps of progress through the long past and prophesy those of the momentous future, must ever be surprised and aggravated with his assumptions of leadership and superiority, a superiority she never concedes, an authority she utterly repudiates.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)