Wichita ? Decades after Charles Lindbergh’s historic 1927 flight across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis, another pilot is preparing to embark on a solo voyage aimed at setting an aviation milestone.

At the controls of the experimental aircraft will be millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, attempting to pilot the first solo, nonstop flight around the world without refueling.

“We have identified this as being one of the most important challenges remaining in aviation, and if I succeed I will earn a place among the great airplane pilots,” Fossett said Friday in a telephone interview from his Chicago office.

As Fossett likes to point out, 91 people flew across the Atlantic before Lindbergh, but it was Lindbergh’s solo flight that made history.

“It is more difficult, but I don’t think the flight can compare in significance to aviation to Lindbergh’s flight,” Fossett said. “But the solo flights are extremely important in aviation.”

Fossett — perhaps best known for making the first solo, round-the-world flight in a balloon in 2002 — is expected to take off later this month. The 23,000-mile flight has already been postponed several times because of shifting jet stream patterns or weather at the takeoff site. It has now been tentatively reset for Feb. 12.

Fossett said his latest adventure was better compared with that of aviation pioneer Wiley Post, the first person to fly solo around the world. Post did it in seven days and eight hours with 11 stops. Fossett will try to do it in three days with no stops in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, a plane designed by aviation designer Burt Rutan.

Rutan’s Voyager aircraft — piloted by his brother, Dick Rutan, and Jeana Yeager — made the first nonstop flight around the world without refueling in 1986.

The big three

Fossett said there were three significant risks to the flight:

• On takeoff, the GlobalFlyer will be loaded down by 13 fuel tanks that when fully loaded will comprise 83 percent of the airplane’s 22,000-pound takeoff weight. “It is the ultimate test flight to see if it will lift off the runway,” Fossett said.
• While climbing to cruising altitude, the fully fueled airplane is particularly vulnerable to structural failure from turbulence.
• And, finally, there is the risk that the fuel will freeze from flying in the cold, high altitudes of 52,000 feet for such a long time.

“We think we have done our homework on all of these three risks, but nevertheless they are very serious risks,” he said.

Salina start

The GlobalFlyer’s flight will begin at Salina Municipal Airport in central Kansas, and then head east for the Atlantic. It will cross Europe and continue toward the Middle East. After crossing China and Japan, the final stretch will come across the Pacific, re-entering the United States just south of Los Angeles, before landing in Salina.

It’s a trip that’s estimated to take 66 hours, flying at speeds in excess of 285 miles per hour.

Not his first record

Fossett, 60, has already set 102 world records in balloons, sailboats, gliders, jet planes and airships. He calculated that 62 of those records are still standing.

Fossett, who boasts he climbed his first mountain at age 11, has participated in endurance events such as the 24-hour Le Mans motor race, the Ironman Triathlon and the Iditarod sled race.

“I am not a thrill seeker,” he said. “I do these things for a sense of achievement and personal satisfaction. A world record is very special to me because it represents I did something farther, faster or higher than anyone has done it before.”

Virgin Atlantic Airways, Britain’s second-largest air carrier, is funding the flight. Virgin’s president, Sir Richard Branson, plans to ride in the chase plane that will be following Fossett around the globe.