and piloting.

Using conventional construction techniques, it's fairly rare for an airplane to have a useful load (fuel, passengers, etc.) equal to its empty weight. Using advanced composite materials and some engineering wizardry by Rutan and Scaled Composites, GlobalFlyer had a useful load about 5 TIMES the plane's empty weight. Max takeoff weight was about 22,000 pounds and the empty weight was on the order of 3400 pounds, for a useful load of about 18,600 pounds. Simply amazing.

As these composite materials get incorporated into newer planes like the 787, with savings will be significant. Every pound of weight savings can save quite a bit of fuel over the plane's life. The design goal of the 787 is to be 20% more efficient than existing planes of the same capacity. Considering that an airliner of that size consumes many thousand gallons of fuel for every long range flight, a 20% savings is significant.