Replica Flyer Foiled By Weather

An anonymous reader submits: "A replica of the Wright Brothers' 1903 flyer failed to fly yesterday afternoon at a demonstration in Chicago. Organizers blamed the measly 5 MPH winds. Kitty Hawk had 25 MPH back on December 17, 1903. IIRC, isn't Chicago the 'Windy City?'" Here's an earlier story about the various groups attempting to re-enact the Wright brothers' pioneer flight.

Comments

100 years of aviation and this is what we get?

[civilengineer]

Anyone saying getting there is half the fun did not fly on modern commercial airlines. -someone's quote I forgot who

Re:100 years of aviation and this is what we get?

[SheldonYoung]

100 years of aviation and we get air travel very safely at unbelievable speeds, where going through the airport often takes longer than the flight itself. It's become so routine nobody even thinks of how amazing flying is.

100 years of aviation and we get safe, affordable high performance airplanes that you can buy and build yourself.

100 years of aviation and we get piston engine airplanes with greater than 1:1 thurst to weight ratio.

100 years of aviation and we feel confident enough to land airplanes without being able to see the ground.

100 years of aviation and we find the next 100 years is decided by laywers and the insurance industry.

Trouble for the Wrights?

[YouHaveSnail]

Should we continue to give the Wrights credit for the first powered flight when they had to rely on 25mph winds? Seems the 1903 Wright flyer was more like a glider.

Re:And this is why Americans are called arrogant

[Anonymous Coward]

As an american, I say credit where credit is due.

For the first, this indeed goes to the chap from down under.

However, this doesn't diminish the work of the Wright's in the least, because their plane was not a derivitive work copied from down under.

They built their plane themselves, from their own research and work.

The Wrights should not be given credit for being first, they weren't. But they should be given credit for starting the airplane revolution in the U.S., because they did, or at least were a big part.

Catapults

[blitz487]

Should we also then assert that navy jets are not really airplanes because they cannot get off the carrier deck under their own power and without the carrier steaming full blast into the wind?

Other conditions

[merlin_jim]

The other condition that most people fail to mention is that the flight occurred off a cliff. The first powered flight, while indeed powered, was more of a glide than a flight. IIRC, they stayed in the air for all of 30 seconds...

Of course data isn't available, but I'd be willing to bet that the only way it stayed in the air was that it was trading forward velocity for lift the whole trip...

Now Brazil had a powered flight the very next year, and based on these facts, are trying to gain recognition for the first "true" flight.

That argument won't "fly" however (excuse the pun), because the Wright brothers were able to improve their design and have a true powered flight within a few months, provably before the first Brazillian powered flight...

Re:Other conditions

[blitz487]

Since the flyer obviously flew forwards relative to the ground from the photo of it in flight, not backwards, it clearly isn't losing that 25mph speed. It isn't flying off of a cliff, either.

What other claimants to first flight have failed in is in providing convincing documentation of their achievements or any contributions at all to aeronautics. They made no further progress, and nothing ever came of or was based on their designs. The Wrights had enough brains to convincingly document every step of the way, including thorough notes, witnesses, photographs, and the machine itself. They steadilly made improvements to their flyers, basing each successive airplane upon lessons learned from the previous. Their fundamental contributions to aeronautical engineering are beyond dispute.

Next: 100 Years of Air Show Disasters

[Speare]

I work at a major aerospace firm, and they're going crazy with enthusiasm about 100 years of flight, of course. One of their brochures highlights a small modern jet banking sharply, composited over an old sepia-toned photograph of an enthusiastic 1900s crowd of spectators.

The first thing that came to mind was the cynical tagline, "100 Years of Air Show Disasters." Unfortunately, given some other crazed wackos before and after the Kitty Hawk, I'm sure that we're already past that milestone. Last week's Air Force Thunderbirds disaster was a sombre reminder of how hard it is to stay in the air even under ideal conditions.

Re:Kind of Sad

[catbutt]

Well, if what you mean by "replicate something done 100 years ago" is "create a heavier than air flying machine", well duh, it's easy.

But if you have to use the same technology they used 100 years ago, I don't see how 100 years of technological advancement really makes it a whole lot easier than it was in the first place. Sure, you could computer model it and all that, but if you end up with a different design than they had, you haven't solved the problem.

Wright Achievements

[blitz487]

To find out more about what the Wrights accomplished with the original Wright Flyer, see "The Wright Brothers as Engineers, An Appraisal" by Quentin Wald. He credits their achievements as:

1. Identification of control as the primary unsolved problem.
2. Realization that an airplane must bank in order to turn, and invention of the first method of doing that.
3. Recognition of the problem of "adverse yaw" and the first control system to deal with that.
4. The first practical wind tunnel experimental program for determining the lifts of various shapes.
5. The first efficient propellors designed from theoretical considerations, and the first usable propellor theory.

I'll add to that the first practical rudder, and the first modern engineering development program consisting of breaking down the problem of flight into component parts, solving each part using prototypes, and then incorporating the solved components into a working design.

Re:Burrell Cannon

[green pizza]

Ah, thanks for the link. I know this isn't the one I was trying to recall, but I guess there's a lot of them... I wonder why the Wrights got all of the credit when there seems to be well documented evidence that they weren't the first.

The Wrights were the first to see heavier-than-air aviation as both the future and as a way to make money. They drummed up interest and started building planes for folks other than themselves. The earlier avation pioneers made their own flying machines for fun and then moved on. They saw no future in their expensive and risky hobby.

Re:For the record

[CrowScape]

I'll take that up. Lief Erickson may have been the first European to hit the North American Continent, but it didn't actually change anything as the information that there's a whole other continent out there didn't travel very far, and was eventually lost to the Europeans. When Columbus reached the New World, the news spread around Europe and expeditions weren't sent off and colonies were made. Columbus's "discovery" was also not influence by Erickson's journey, so the fact vikings may have been the first Europeans in the New World is more of a historical curiosity. It's a similar story with the airplane. A few others may have flown before, but the Wright's airplane was constructed independantly of all knowledge of sucessful flights and they were the ones who introduced it to the world. Invention is a bit like starting a lawmower engine. One pull doesn't necessarily mean you'll get the motor going. Hell, the Greek's invented the steam engine before the Roman Empire even existed, but we credit Thomas Savery (and later, James Watt) for inventing it, not Heron of Alexandria, because Savery made it independantly and James Watt took it and changed the world.

MOD PARENT HUMOUR-IMPAIRED!!!

[marko123]

mod parent humour-impaired!!!

Re:Engine powered flight dates back from...

[sllim]

Maybe his first flight was superior.
The literature that I have come across is pretty straight forward in saying that people don't know a whole lot about the guy, his airplane or what he did.
A tremendous amount of the information about him is heresay and speculation.

But modern aviation is a direct evolution of the Wright Flyer and not some New Zelanders hobby.
The Wright Brothers spent several years refinning there design and pushing for a more stable aircraft and better design.
These other people, it was just a hobby to them. They never refined there designs. They never took the aircraft to the next logical step.

These people that are putting down the Wright Brothers work, these are all basicaly people that get annoyed that the US is what it is. That we achieved in 200 years what Europe was unable to do in 2000 years.
The truth is that it all comes down to Capitlism. It was the business model that provided the motivation to the Wright Brothers to do what they did.
You may not like it, you may be happier in a State owned society, or a society where people have convinced themselves that the government makes life worth living.
But Capitalism works and the Wright Brothers are an excellent example of this.

Re:For the record

[CrowScape]

Not at all, the question is which inventor's accomplishment actually had an impact on the world. Is Pearse's accomplishment a historical milestone or a historical curiosity, like the Aeolipile?