Around the World in Eighty Years offers adventure, tragedy, pathos, humor, angel intervention, career obstacles and a concerned view of the often murky waters of governmental and industrial relations. An odyssey on wings of discovery has been presented in such a way as to share with the reader how the fates carried the authorCa decorated Air Force pilot and aeronautical engineerCinto intense worldwide flying adventures in all types of World War II fighters, bombers and transport aircraft. The intensity of that exposure, together with the author’s executive assignments in military venues, as well as the venues of industrial technology and commerce, provided positive impetus for engaging in certain controversial issues of today. Controversial issues are approached through the metaphor of individual flight by man, seen as being in parallel to the fact that earthlings, too, are in flight as passengers on spaceship Earth’s passage through time and space. Each of those two modes of flight must base survival on timely decisions. The present lack of timely decisions on protecting the planet’s ecology threatens the near-term ability of the planet to sustain human life. The odyssey ends with an approach to this dilemma.