Airbus backs a glider setting sights on the stratosphere

Minden: Airbus hopes to take a pioneering step into the stratosphere Saturday, when the aeronautics giant -- weather permitting -- sends the Perlan 2 glider to the edge of space with chairman Tom Enders as co-pilot.

The flight, from an airstrip in the western US state of Nevada, is planned for 1:45 local time (2045 GMT) and should last between a half-hour and two hours. But rain is predicted, and the flight could be pushed back a day.

The flight, part of a series in recent months from the mountainous area just east of the Lake Tahoe resort, aims to test how well the craft and crew will fare in conditions -- extremely thin atmosphere and bitterly cold temperatures -- similar to those on Mars.

Airbus, supporting the Mission Perlan 2 group that launched the ambitious project, aims to test every aspect of the unpowered aircraft, flying it at various speeds and altitudes and subjecting it to different scenarios of stress and vibration.

Its designers hope to show that the lightweight aircraft, with its extremely long, thin wings, is strong enough to resist intense stresses that could destroy a less solid plane.

Airbus sources said that while any such flight has some risk, Enders would not be going up unless the risks were considered small. They said previous flights had demonstrated the reliability of the craft.

Designers, drawing on computerized simulations, plan to induce high-frequency vibrations to the wings to see if the glider itself can contain those vibrations at safe levels.

Ed Warnock, chief executive of the Perlan group, said his team wants to test whether it is possible for the crew to breathe only the air inside the craft without condensation damaging instruments or causing windows to fog up. "We have to control it," he said.

The Perlan 2 project has pulled together top aerospatial experts and aviation engineers to develop its space glider. Airbus, which hopes to build planes capable of flying at altitudes above those now used -- potentially saving time and fuel -- is earmarking up to $4 million for the project, making it one of the largest investors.

The glider, with a wing span of 90 feet (27 meters) and a weight of only 1,800 pounds (815 kilograms), is designed to ride updrafts to an altitude of up to 90,000 feet (27,400 meters), even though air density at that height is only 2 percent what it is at sea level.

The craft's cabin is supposed to maintain pressure equal to that at 15,000 feet (4,600 meters), saving the crew from having to wear bulky flight suits, Airbus said.

Perlan 2 also aims to collect atmospheric data useful in fighting climate change as it travels to the edge of space.

- High hopes for success -

The Perlan team hopes the test flight this weekend will keep it on track to break the previous altitude record of 85,000 feet (25,900 meters) set in 1976 by the SR-71 Blackbird, a US Air Force reconnaissance plane built by Lockheed, Warnock said.

The attempt will come after the Perlan 2 team moves to Argentina later this year. Air currents there have been powerfully bolstered by the polar vortex all the way to the stratosphere, and currents rising from the Andes are particularly strong.

The air drafts that carry a craft like Perlan 2 skyward are strongest in mountainous regions.

However, said Warnock, "We can't take the plane to Argentina until we know it's perfectly safe."

Europe's Airbus group, by supporting a project that harks back to the golden age of space exploration, has hoped to link its name to the sort of innovative aerospace work being carried out by the American billionaires Elon Musk (SpaceX and Tesla) and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin, Amazon) as they duel to develop new launch vehicles.

To get a craft and pilots weighing a total of roughly a ton "to the edge of space without using any rocket fuel," said Warnock, "that's innovative."