![](http://www.airbusgroup.com/.imaging/stk/airbusgroup/contentImageFlexHeight_560/dam/assets/airbusgroup/int/en/story-overview/Perlan-II/perlan-small/jcr:content/perlan-small.2015-09-16-10-20-53.jpg")
Posted on 05/10/2016 4:06:53 PM PDT by WhiskeyX
Airbus Group chief executive Tom Enders took the controls of the two-seat Perlan II glider during a 10min test flight on 7 May from the windswept, high-desert airport in Minden, Nevada, raising the public profile of a volunteer team of aviation adventurers hoping to make history in about four months.
Afterwards, Enders – a licensed helicopter pilot and skydiving enthusiast – pronounced the Airbus-sponsored composite vehicle ready to achieve the Perlan team’s goal of shattering the winged altitude record of 85,069ft set by the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in 1976, using a unique and barely understood weather phenomenon instead of afterburning engines to lift two pilots as high as 90,000ft over the southern tip of Argentina.
[....]
But the Perlan team is well aware of the risks of flying an unpowered aircraft so near the edge of space. Ed Warnock, chief executive of the $7 million Perlan project, established careful criteria for selecting volunteer test pilots of the glider.
“We really need to recruit old people who don't care [about dying],” Warnock says, “or really young people with no children”.
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
“We really need to recruit old people who don’t care [about dying],” Warnock says, “or really young people with no children”.
...
That’s the winning spirit.
The altitude record they’re trying to break must be for “sustained altitude”.
The F-15 used in Operation Streak Eagle zoomed over 100,000 ft.
“Air so turbulent it could rip the wings off the glider”
They better have some duct tape with them. I’m no aeronautical engineer, but I’m pretty sure that wings ripping off is a bad thing.
“The altitude record they’re trying to break must be for “sustained altitude”.”
“The F-15 used in Operation Streak Eagle zoomed over 100,000 ft.”
Yes, that’s correct.
F-15 Streak Eagle Record Flights Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLka4GoUbLo
The pilots range-factor/power settings/speed curves on a chart plot extends to a limit in excess of 4.2 mach at altitude 72,000 with 90% ramjet/full AB mode. Best economy was paradoxically +3.2 mach and not slower.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3ao5SCedIk
Maybe they should send a drone up first, so they can determine the altitude at which the wings will be ripped off.
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