Fuel - a big worry for Steve and the attempt
Mission Control have released a statement this morning regarding a loss of fuel in the early hours of Steve Fossett’s flight, which could lead to the attempt being abandoned.
There was a discrepancy of 2,600 pounds in readings between the fuel burn and a series of probes in the main beams of the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer in the first three and a half hours of the flight.
During last night, Mission Control carried out various tests, but still know little as to why and how the problem occurred. Early flight fuel readings have been concluded to be ’not accurate’, and the lower reading of the amount of fuel onboard is the one that has been taken into account by the team for safety reasons.
Jon Karkow from Scaled Composites was unable to say whether it was due to leakage or evaporation. "We really don’t know what it is... It's more than likely a system issue, such as a fuel venting line. It's been very puzzling for us, and we saw it quite early on."
...The average tailwind speed needed for Steve to successfully complete the round the world circuit is 58 knots and so far they are relatively hopeful as the winds have been around this speed.
When this information was released at 14:00 UTC, Steve was already over 37 hours into the flight and had 5,500 pounds of fuel left.
In a couple of hours, Mission Control and Steve will have to decide whether is it safe to depart Japanese airspace for the Pacific Ocean, which is the largest ocean in the world and the most vunerable part of the route. The fuel will continue to be monitored closely up until this point and, if Steve decides he will attempt to cross the Pacific Ocean, another decision on the attempt's continuation will be made at about halfway across on approach to Hawaii...
http://www.virginatlanticglobalflyer...ues_update.jsp