20060211
    Without stopping, sleeping, and in spite of leaking 750lbs of fuel and bad weather over India, Steve Fossett set the world record for the longest continuous flight around the world today after an emergency landing in Kent, England.
    Many might react ‘big deal, he flew around the world’, but consider the technological requirement for one man to fly, unaided and unrefueled, around the world. That’s an astonishing accomplishment however technologically jaded one might be.
    In Steve Fossett and his companions in adventure Burt Rutan and Richard Branson, the world has the next great set of technological adventurers. To many, their attempts, such as building spaceplanes or flying around the world alone, seem expensive and foolhardy, their adventurous spirit is of the same kind as that of Christopher Columbus or the Wright Brothers, and who can doubt what contributions those men made to the modern world?
    We should seek out more people like Fossett, Rutan, and Branson, because their love of technology and adventure is the stuff the future is made of.
DLH
