Conditions and objectives change. In the case of the human-powered airplane contest, the designs of other teams were hampered by the traditional idea of what it takes to build an aircraft. These teams envisioned sailplane-like aircrafts that would ensure pilot safety. MacCready realized this was the wrong approach. You could have an ugly, dirty-looking, hang glider-type plane. Quick to build. And he knew that if the aircraft flew slowly and barely above the ground, safety would be a moot point.
This was only going to fly at ten feet altitude at ten miles an hour. If it broke, who cared? Nobody would get hurt. But also, you could have it just on the very edge of breaking.
No safety margin at all. Instead of cables, you use thin piano wire as a structural element. With that idea, and the basic idea of large and light, the problem was solved. The pilot was sealed inside. At the end of the flight, the pilot had to step through the side of the fuselage to exit. That meant damage to the plane was inevitable, even during a perfect flight.
Other teams were building complex wings with ribs, spars, and stringers made from very carefully carved balsa. Meanwhile, the MacCready team used carved foam, mylar, and spun carbon fiber spars. The result was a plane easy to modify and easy to repair. So the team went to a local pool. This swimming pool event gave us the insight to complete all the stability and control problems.
We came up with a final version and it worked. He looks to kids as proof. Certainly in the sandbox you are creative. Everybody is. You can figure out just how far to push them and so on. Left: 13 year-old Paul MacCready with a gas-powered model airplane. Right: MacCready echoes the pose later in life. Find Ways to Fail Quicker. As our innovation processes are necessarily iterative, they will include all sorts of prototypes, trials and demonstrations on which we build the knowledge needed to make something truly new.
To borrow an illustration from a colleague — when an Olympic athlete trains to run meters under minutes, does every time he runs at during his training count as failure? You fail at doing something once, not multiple times. Mistake tollerance is the key.
Some processes lend themselves to learning from mistakes better than others: digital vs film photography as a way to learn how to control exposure, writing with a computer vs writing with pen and ink as a way to avoid complete rewriters…. OverEngineering, OverCoding, OverDesigning, OverAnything does not gain the immediacy and flexibility of creating and fine-tuning an idea in a quick amount of time.
This article is a good reminder that speaks to the simplicity of approach to any project. Excellent post. This is exactly the sort of thing we try and teach our undergraduate engineers at LJMU. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
I estimate if the writer made one more revision, I would have sent it to my dad, as I did with the last SVN essay about aeronautics. National Soaring Championship , a gliding competition. He became the International Soaring Champion in France in , the first American to achieve this goal. During those years, he worked on projects ranging from sailplane development to soaring techniques to meterology, and he designed the Speed Ring Airspeed Selector, which is used by glider pilots all over the world to select the optimum flight speed between thermals.
In , MacCready formed his second company, AeroVironment , to focus on new energy sources, such as solar and wind power. The organization has since become well-known and respected for product and technology innovation in clean energy and efficient vehicles. In the mids, MacCready was inspired by his theoretical knowledge of the soaring patterns of birds to conquer a very practical challenge. That flight, made by "pilot-engine" and bicycle racer Bryan Allen, took almost three hours and covered more than 20 miles.
In the early s, MacCready led AeroVironment to create two more aircraft, the Gossamer Penguin and the Solar Challenger, which were both powered by the sun.
These machines were meant to draw the world's attention to photovoltaic cells as a renewable and non-polluting energy source. The prize went unclaimed for more than 17 years, despite more than 50 official attempts to claim the money. Many of the attempts at winning the Kremer Prize were made with very sleek, efficient and relatively fast aircraft.
But these aircraft tended to be rather heavy, which meant that, combined with their sleek design, the aircraft required more power to get airborne. And because it had to be human-powered to win the prize, power was a limited variable. While watching vultures fly one day, MacCready developed the idea he thought could lead to winning the elusive prize. Instead of focusing on building a very aerodynamically clean aircraft with its weight and speed penalties, he would build a very light aircraft that would fly so slowly that there would be little concern for the extra drag of items like wire bracing.
With a wingspan of 96 feet, the pedal-powered Gossamer Condor weighed only 70 pounds. It was an extremely delicate airplane constructed with a minimal amount of aluminum for structure and covered with a very thin layer of Mylar.
Because one of the requirements to win the Kremer Prize was to fly in a figure-eight, the biggest challenge proved to be figuring out how to turn the delicate airplane. Eventually the team used an idea first put into practice by the Wright brothers: wing warping.
The combination of wing warping and tilting the canard wing out in front of the pilot allowed the airplane to make coordinated turns. By gently twisting the wings, the Gossamer Condor didn't require any traditional control surfaces such as ailerons or a vertical rudder, both of which would add precious weight to the aircraft.
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