> Here we are on December 17th, 2004, the 100th anniversary of the Wright > > brothers having achieved controlled powered manned flight. > > > And here I am still trying to work out the "controlled" part. > > > Seriously, though: one of my most vivid memories from my stint in the > USAF is standing at the base of the Wright Brothers Memorial on a hill > overlooking Wright Patterson AFB and watching an older Navy jet fighter > make its landing approach to Area A. > > Any predictions for the next hundred years of flight?
There are some great articles around this month, in particular Scientific American's "200 Years Of Flight" article, happily living on my toilet tank right now. But most of these articles talk about farther, higher, faster. I think that stuff's interesting, butI hope I have a sympathetic ear in this forum when I say this: that's not what it's about. I can't argue that those are incredible goals to achieve and achieve again. But the Wrights, for all their commercial acumen, wanted to build airplanes so they could *fly*! They wanted to strap into a machine and see the treetops from above, feel the wind on their faces, and see their friends waving their hats at them from below. It's that spirit of flight that I hope doesn't get lost. It is my hope that our ever-increasing material and mechanical engineerings abilities as humans bring us lighter, cheaper, and more elegant aircraft, as well as the stratospheric, hypersonic, unmanned machines of industry and war. I want to fly around the country with camping gear; I want to sip gas (or hydrogen) quietly. I want 254 pounds to be more than I need. Quieter, more affordable, more elegant. It's just squeezing on the opposite end of the design spec. ... And hey, did anyone see Junkyard Wars the other day? Three national teams building aircraft from scrap in 20 hours over two days. They all flew. Britain's cool biplane took the cake. And I thought the French would take it. The American team had balance problems that led them to distrust their airframe, so they landed early. It was awesome. -J RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
