Re-Building the Wright Flyer

Isaac-Lew writes: "Several teams are trying to build a working replica of the first Wright Brothers' airplane." As the article says, "The catch is: Each team wants its plane to fly more or less as the Wrights' did." The only problem with that is that as Orville Wright put it, their plane was "exceedingly erratic," so the recreators have made some slight concessions to safety.

Comments

Answering the obvious question - why?

[Brento]

They're trying to build a version to fly at Kitty Hawk for the centennial celebration of the original flight, December 17th 1903.

Re:Exceedingly Erratic == Unsafe

[Rogerborg]

• I hope none of the replica teams crack up... there's enough aviation hysteria these days, without a "reenactment" generating more bad press

Any reason it has to have a live pilot? How about a crash test dummy and some remote controls?

Or (even better) how about an onboard or offboard expert system? There's a nice limited set of variables to work on: height 0 - 3 metres, speed as fast as you can manage, go in a straight line, don't make a crater when you land. Seems like an ideal application.