"Maybe it's time for a stunt." My old Stanford classmate, Andy von Flotow, eyed the globe in his hand. We were chatting one night in February 1998. I had just returned from Western Australia, where the aerosonde, a diminutive unmanned aircraft on which I had been working for six years, was being tested. The aerosonde was conceived for long-range weather monitoring over the oceans, but the range of our trials was limited by lack of over-the-hori-zon communications. While we waited for emerging satellite-relay systems, we had to stay within a hundred miles or so of a ground station if we wanted to send commands and monitor data from our aircraft. But Andy was proposing that we ignore the restriction. He was suggesting that we cross the North Atlantic.
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机译：“也许是时候做特技了。”我的老斯坦福同学安迪·冯·弗洛托（Andy von Flotow）看着他的手中的地球。 1998年2月，我们在一个晚上聊天。我刚从西澳大利亚州回来，正在对我曾在其上工作了6年的小型无人驾驶飞机进行探空。探空仪的设计目的是对海洋进行远程天气监测，但由于缺乏超视距通信，我们的试验范围受到了限制。在等待新兴的卫星中继系统时，如果我们想发送命令并监视飞机的数据，就必须离地面站约一百英里。但是安迪提议我们忽略这一限制。他建议我们穿越北大西洋。
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