It was also two teenagers who, some 50 years earlier, came up with the idea of flying machines and the aerodynamics of wings in the first place:
The brothers Otto and Gustav Lilienthal were watching the storks take flight in the meadows of Mecklenburg in the 1850s. And it made them think, “We could do that, too, if we only had wings like that”.
Of course, Otto died in a crash of one of his motorless flying machines in 1891, I believe. But the Wright brothers saw the eulogy in the paper… and the rest is history.
I'm trying to imagine what a bunch of teenagers could do today to get a similar sense of accomplishment. Note that they weren't even doing particularly well at grade school.
It is so unfortunate that flying has such a credentialist mafia holding it back from more widespread use. Imagine if motorcycles had even half the regulations to ride as single seater aircraft do. Such a ridiculous state of affairs.
Here is one in flight, very recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRYdpoOakAY
Reminded me of this book: https://archive.org/details/borednothingtodo0000spie
It was also two teenagers who, some 50 years earlier, came up with the idea of flying machines and the aerodynamics of wings in the first place:
The brothers Otto and Gustav Lilienthal were watching the storks take flight in the meadows of Mecklenburg in the 1850s. And it made them think, “We could do that, too, if we only had wings like that”.
Of course, Otto died in a crash of one of his motorless flying machines in 1891, I believe. But the Wright brothers saw the eulogy in the paper… and the rest is history.
And there's building a (non-replica) plane out of cardboard: https://youtu.be/CTEYcDU91p8
I'm trying to imagine what a bunch of teenagers could do today to get a similar sense of accomplishment. Note that they weren't even doing particularly well at grade school.
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It is so unfortunate that flying has such a credentialist mafia holding it back from more widespread use. Imagine if motorcycles had even half the regulations to ride as single seater aircraft do. Such a ridiculous state of affairs.