Human Powered Paper Airplane

gilgsn writes: "The Raven is a honeycomb paper, foam and graphite-fibre tape, human powered airplane designed to beat the current record held by MIT's Daedalus . The plane is also powered by a 16MHz Motorola 68332. The technical specifications of the onboard computer are pretty interesting. Unfortunately, as reported on Ananova, the Raven recently crashed a mere 100 feet after taking off, causing some damage to its fragile structure. Maybe they could upgrade to a Pentium and convinced Lance Armstrong to give it a try..."

Comments

A 16 MHz Proc?

[cscx]

The last thing you want is an application to slow down when you're up in the air.... Maybe they should switch to Embedded Linux!

Pilot vs. Engine

[Raetsel]

Paul MacCready had the Gossamer Condor and then the Gossamer Albatross -- two famous aircraft, to be sure.

A group at MIT built the Light Eagle and Daedalus.

In both cases, the pilot was in as complete control of the craft as I can imagine; providing both power and control input. Daedalus had a... problem... I believe it was a gust of wind that put it in the surf off Santorini beach. Perhaps, if the pilot had not been so exhausted from being the engine as well, that might not have happened. Good argument for flight controls that don't get tired.

Then there are people like me (an occasional sailplane pilot, more seldom than I'd like), who would rather not have something else be in control of a craft that is so vulnerable to the whims of the wind.

You mentioned the pilot "most of the time" is the electronics. How much control does the human engine actually have? (Just curious...) Granted, it'd be rather nice to have the 'highway in the sky' that NASA and Paul Moller keep crowing about...

It's rather ironic, actually, that this testing is happening on Boeing's home turf. The attitudes of Boeing vs. Airbus with regard to computer control used to be 180 apart: Boeing's computer systems would default to what the human pilot believed was necessary, while Airbus had a system that limited what the pilot was able to do. In effect, Airbus' computer design had final authority. I believe this changed after the A3xx airshow crash (when the pilot tried to apply power and ended up in the trees anyway), but I haven't heard anything about this for several years.

I hope more enlightened attitudes have prevailed.