This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 1:35 am and is filed under Airport history, Wiley Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Think your plane flight is too long?
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The folks at AASHTO, the American Assoc. of State Highway and Transportation Officials, remind us that on June 23, 1931, aviation pioneer Wiley Post and navigator Harold Gatty set out on a record-breaking flight.Traveling in Post’s single-engine monoplane, nicknamed Winnie Mae in honor of Post’s daughter, the daring duo left Roosevelt Field in New York and made a 15,474-mile trip around the world. They made 14 stops and ended up back in New York eight days and 16 hours later, setting a world record for air travel.
That record didn’t stand for long, though. In July, 1933 Post made a solo trip around the world in seven days and 19 hours.
Not content with just flying around this world, Post was thinking about supersonic transport and space travel. So in 1934, he designed a “Man from Mars” high-altitude pressure suit and tested it in an unofficial ascent to 49,000 feet.
Sadly, Post never did get to test his space suit on Mars. He died in an airplane takeoff crash with his friend Will Rogers near Point Barrow, Alaska, on August 15, 1935.
