How did you sneak that in before my post? :-<
WTF
There are different definitions for the term ‘fly’. I got the OP the answer he was looking for. Going to the extremes, either Voyager (spacecraft) or Vanguard is the winner. Some would say the shuttle does not ‘fly’ very far compared to other aircraft. You could say in space it’s falling, and being launched it’s a missile, and only at some point during re-entry does it start flying, and that’s unpowered, or gliding. A B50 Superfortress first circumnavigated non-stop in 1949. Rutan’s Voyager was the first to do it without refueling, and Steve Fosset was the second, going solo in a balloon. Taking the time period into consideration, the Graf Zeppelin’s 6988 mile non-stop flight as one leg of a circumnavigation in 1929 is quite remarkable. I don’t knw the details, but it’s possible the airship never ‘landed’ but was simply moored along the way.
Actually, I’d say it would fly in exactly the same way that bricks do, i.e., not at all.
Well, bricks actually fly pretty good. As with the tanker, you just need enough thrust.
I mean, hell, look at the F-4 Phantom if you don’t believe me. 
“As God is my witness…” 
The Graf Zeppelin flew around the world in, IIRC, 1929. Though it made numerous stops, none of them were necessary, e.g., for fuel.
The Hindenberg’s listed speeds:
• Cruising Speed: 125 km/h (76 MPH)
• Maximum Speed: 135 km/h (84 MPH) (From here)
I would argue that Voyager would not win as it does not have a pilot which to me is inherent so I will say Apollo 13
I did this month’s quota for math back in post 16, so work out the details and give us the answer. Remember that the Shuttle and ISS have spent some really long periods of time in space.
Helping with OP:
"Next to the airplane, " = not a fixed wing, engine powered flying machine, including planes and jets. By this definition, I think dirgibles would be eliminated, as they do have fixed wings and engines, although lift is created by gas.
“what’s the farthest-traveling manmade flying machine?” = not natural, like pollen that travels in the earth’s planetary air currents.
“And by farthest-traveling, I mean cross-continental,” = Within the atmosphere, thus eliminating spacecraft.
“as in migrating like a bird.” = Birds stop and “refuel” during migrations. Logically, this would eliminate rockets, regardless of how far that rocket could fly, as nearly anything that could refuel would exceed it over time. However, also logically, this would make the question unanswerable since theoretically you could keep repairing and flying say a hang glider for hundreds of years.
Dirigibles do not by definition have wings. They may have horizontal control surfaces, which do not provide lift. You could put wings on a dirigible, but they would be unnecessary for flight, and possibly detrimental to flight characteristics.
Oh, I thought the cockpit thing had wings on the sides.
Vocabulary nitpick: “cockpit thing” =- gondola, for historical reasons.
On most airships (of all three types), no, no wings. I believe some blimps had engines mounted on either side of the gondola, and stubby winglike structures used for affixing them firmly to the gondola+envelope rest of the blimp, but they’re ‘wings’ only in the sense that a wingback chair has wings.
I cannot think of any cruise missile with the range of an ICBM.
And depending on the definition in use, ICBMs may or may not fly.
A bird migrates by flying a few miles and landing to eat. If we allow our flying machines to do the same thing, then most any man made air vehicle has comparable or greater range. In other words, your question makes no sense.
FYI to the thread …
In FAA parlance an “aircraft” is anything man-made which operates in the atmosphere but not in space. Machines which pass through the atmosphere on their way to or from space are “spacecraft.”
Aircraft are subdivided into lighter than air vehicles (LTA), airplanes, and rotorcraft.
LTA are then subdivided into free balloons, tethered balloons, blimps and dirigibles. Airplanes are powered & unpowered, and rotorcraft include helicopters, gyroplanes, and a couple other oddball categories. And of course powered airplanes being the most numerous type of the bunch are subdivided into several more layers of official FAA taxonomy.
Spacecraft have a whole 'nuther batch of official subtypes according to FAA.
Dirigibles and balloons are by definition not airplanes, in that they do not generate lift from, well, airplanes (also known as airfoils or wings). Most airplanes are heavier-than-air craft that generate lift by manipulating airflow over their control surfaces (or, in the case of jump-jets and tilt-rotors, by pointing the engines at the sky, which arguably still counts if you count the rotor and turbine blades as really small airfoils). Dirigibles and other balloons generate lift by displacing air with a lighter gas, usually helium (although hydrogen was once popular). They actually stay afloat the same way that water-going ships do.
Whatever travels the farthest really doesn’t matter. It won’t get anywhere taking off from a treadmill!
It can if you switch from door #1 to door #2.
Well, not quite. For the purposes of regulation, the FAA does not consider those machines regulated under part 103 FAR’s to be “aircraft”. Those would be ultralight airplanes, hang gliders, and ultralight balloons. This distinction was made so that all the existing rules that apply to “aircraft” would not have to be changed to make exceptions for the new “ultralight vehicles”.
It is likely that if some other new type of flying machine is developed, and needs it’s own regulations, the FAA will also declare it not to be part of it’s definition of “aircraft”.
Mir space station?
Jeez, miss one little word like “flying” and everyone jumps on your ass about it…
Heavens Above’s section for spacecraft leaving the solar system has stats for which craft is the furthest away. Per them, Voyager 1 is the furthest at 116.463 AU away, or 10.826 billion miles. (Using wiki’s AU definition of 92,955,807.27 miles)
Vanguard 1’s orbital elements can be found at it’s wiki. From there, we get a semi-major axis of 8689.7 km, an eccentricity of 0.1909, and a period of 134.2 minutes. From the wiki for the semi-minor axis, we get the equation:
b = a* Square root of (1-e^2), where b = the semi-minor axis, e = eccentricity, and a = the semi-major axis.
This yields a semi-minor axis of 8373.0 km.
Doubling the values of the semi-minor and semi-major axes yields the values for the minor and major axes of the ellipse, 16,746.0 Km and 17379.4 Km respectively. Plugging those into this calculator (because I can’t do elliptical integrals) yields an ellipse circumference of 53613.29 Km, which Vanguard travels every 134.2 minutes.
It was launched on March 17, 1958. Let’s give it a day and a half to get into its final orbit, say March 19, 1958. To, but not including today, that’s 19,354 days. The site helpfully calculates that’s been 27,869,760 minutes. Divide by period of 134.2 minutes to get 207,673.3 orbits. Multiply by 53,613.29 Km to get 11.134 billion Km, or 6.903 billion miles.