Glider with pressurized cockpit - USA - Curt Lewis

From Oregon to space: High-altitude glider tests planned

BEND, Ore. (AP) - The sky is hardly the limit for the latest aviation project at the Redmond Airport.

Next week, the Perlan 2, an experimental glider that aims to eventually go more than 90,000 feet in the air, will make its initial test flight at the Redmond Airport. The low-altitude flight - the sailplane will run through a series of checks approximately 5,000 feet off the ground - will be the first in-air test for the glider, which later hopes to shatter the fixed-wing aircraft altitude record of 50,722 feet set by Perlan Project founder Einar Enevoldson and his co-pilot and noted adventurer Steve Fossett in 2006. 

"It's going to be a milestone in aviation history," boasted Doug Perrenod, the project coordinator for the Perlan 2 launch. "This glider is going to go higher than any other fixed-wing aircraft with a pilot in it. That includes the Air Force's U-2 (spy plane). It really will be the edge of space."

The dream of Enevoldson, a former NASA test pilot, the Perlan Project looks to build a glider that can travel to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere. The Perlan 2, an 1,800-pound glider with an 84-foot wingspan, will be towed into the air like a traditional glider, but will then ride high altitude mountain waves in its later flights when it attempts to go beyond 50,000 feet.

"Before, there's never been a glider that could sustain pilots that high," Perrenod said. "Aircrafts that go into higher altitudes have pressurized systems. Commercial aircrafts, for example, pump air into their planes for their crew and passengers. 

"Gliders don't have engines, though," Perrenod added. "What glider pilots have discovered at high altitudes is that they needed some way to pressurize the cockpit." 

The Perlan Project developed its own life-support system for its high-altitude flights, a "re-breather" system similar to underwater diving. 

"This is not an off-the-shelf thing," Perrenod added. "We've taken some different components and ideas and customized them for our own application. Almost everything from nose to tail (on the glider) is new technology. If we accomplish everything we're trying to do, this thing will wind up in the Smithsonian." 

Pressurizing the Perlan 2's cockpit gives it a unique look among gliders, Perrenod says.