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This article relates to My Dad's A Birdman
Aeronautical engineer and inventor
Paul MacCready
(1925-2007) earned the title
"birdman" becoming internationally known in 1977 as the "father of
human-powered flight" when his Gossamer Condor made the first sustained,
controlled flight by a heavier-than-air craft powered solely by its pilot's
muscles. For the feat he received the $95,000 Henry Kremer Prize; and the Condor is
now housed at the
Smithsonian.
Two years later, his team created the Gossamer Albatross, another 70-pound craft with a 96-foot wingspan that, with DuPont sponsorship, achieved a human-powered flight
across the English Channel. That flight, made by "pilot-engine" Bryan Allen,
took almost three hours. It won the new Kremer prize of $213,000, at the time
the largest cash prize in aviation history.
Next, MacCready and his team developed two more aircraft, this time powered by the sun. In 1980, the
Gossamer Penguin made the first climbing flight
powered solely by sunbeams. In 1981, the rugged
Solar Challenger was piloted 163
miles from Paris to England, at an altitude of 11,000 feet. These
solar-powered aircraft were built and flown to draw world attention to
photovoltaic cells as a renewable and non-polluting energy source for home and
industry, and to demonstrate the use of DuPont's advanced materials for
lightweight structures.
In 1983, MacCready's team built the 70-pound, human-powered (with on-board battery
energy storage)
Bionic Bat, partly to vie for new Kremer speed prizes and partly
to explore new technologies leading toward practical, long-duration, unmanned
vehicles and quiet, slow-speed, piloted aircraft. In 1984, the Bionic Bat won
two speed prizes.
In 1984, the team developed a large radio-controlled, wing-flapping, flying replica
of the largest animal that ever flew: the long-extinct pterodactyl
Quetzalcoatlus northropi, whose giant wings spanned 36 feet. The
QN replica
became the lead "actor" in a 1986 wide-screen IMAX film titled "On the Wing", a
film depicting the interrelation between the developments of biological flight
and aircraft.
Interesting Link: A website, dedicated to
Paul MacCready and his
work.
Image: The Gossamer Albatross II at Dryden Flight Research Center in 1980
Filed under People, Eras & Events
This "beyond the book article" relates to My Dad's A Birdman. It originally ran in May 2008 and has been updated for the March 2011 paperback edition. Go to magazine.
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