“Around the world in 80 hours.” The happy marketing slogan affixed to Steve Fossett’s attempt to set a nonstop, around-the-world solo flight record makes it sound like something of a nostalgic lark: Hints of Jules Verne, the golden age of global adventure.

October 23, 2003—London. Around the world on a single tank of gas has been done. Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager accomplished the feat in 1986, flying Burt Rutan's brilliant propeller-driven Voyager aircraft. It was a gruelling nine-day ordeal for the duo, and it stretched aviation technology to its limits.



But Richard Branson and Steve Fossett think they can push the technology even further, and today the pair unveiled their plans to go one better—flying solo, and in only a third the time.