Snow glide edge tuner11/14/2023 At such heights, an aircraft can maintain lift and power only if it is very light or very fast. In the rarefied atmosphere 90,000 feet up, the air density is just two percent of what it is at sea level, and about the same air density as on the surface of Mars. The highest known waves rise up over the Andes in southern Argentina and interact with the polar vortex, the giant cyclone of air that swirls around the poles. To get there the sailplane will ride stratospheric mountain waves, prodigious currents of air created by winds that sweep over mountains. When it is ready, Perlan 2 will attempt what no glider-what no piloted aircraft-has ever achieved: sustained flight at 90,000 feet, far into the stratosphere and near the vacuum of space. “It’s killing me not to get up there,” he says, but the glider he’s learning to fly, Perlan 2, is not quite ready. For pilot Tim Gardner, however, the weather is perfect-ideal conditions for high-altitude soaring. Airliners approaching Reno report severe turbulence, and most small aircraft are staying on the ground. Stretching from the California border across central Nevada is a series of cloud lines, like waves rolling toward the shore, accompanied by vicious winds. A broad expanse of brilliant blue sky separates it from another wall of cloud running parallel. The wall runs the length of the ridgeline that stretches south toward the desert cities of Palm Springs and Las Vegas. A wall of cloud runs above the eastern slope of the Carson Range, which looms over the town of Minden, Nevada, about an hour south of Reno.
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