800-Pound Paper Airplane Soars High

That is pretty cool!

800 pounds and nearly 100 mph!

To give this some perspective, Windward Performance's SparrowHawk sailplane (my favorite) weighs 155 pounds, 36 foot wingspan, but carries one human pilot.

I didn't realize they were that lite.

Most are in the 300 to 500 pound range, but the SparrowHawk is all carbon fiber. The wings are about 50% of the weight.

WindWard Performace is making the aircraft for the Perlan Project. It would be the first sailplane to reach a record breaking altitude of 90,000 feet using a weather phenomena called a Polar Vortex. Basically, an updraft on steroids.

To put that in perspective, one of my past instructors holds the woman's altitude record at almost 33,000 feet.

This project takes it an order of magnitude in complexity due to the extreme conditions at those altitudes. Basically, you need to wear a spacesuit and carry the necessary life support. The aircraft also needs to fly much faster at altitude than a normal sailplane, reaching speeds close to 1/2 Mach 1. Aircraft weight is about 1,100 pounds with an 84 foot wingspan that holds two people.