White and delicate, high tech yet oddly primitive, the plane looks like some elegant insect or a sleek, latter-day pterodactyl. With her reedlike central wing slicing across three slender cylinders, she might have been designed by an austere modern sculptor rather than an aeronautical engineer. In an age of space travel and supersonic flight, her mission is a throwback to a different kind of odyssey: to fly not faster, but longer. Not higher, but farther. Voyager is a flight of fancy, of quaint possibility.
A round-the-world flight without stopping and without refueling is one of the last firsts of atmospheric aviation....
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
