What’s Wrong with Aviation?

An Article by Albert S. Levino in Harpers Weekly, 1912 (with some modifications)

By 1912 aviation had some great inventors and many daring aviators, but had yet to produce a great commercial mind. Mechanically, the airplane had made swift strides in its brief tenure of life more than any other means of transportation did in twice the time. Commercially, the American airplane industry is not one bit better off today than it was three years ago.

This is the conclusion of a feature article in Harper’s Weekly.

The article postulates several causes for this state of affairs:

1. Too much exhibition business, which has over exploited the airplane and failed to establish its practical value.
2. Too much publicity, with too many promises impossible of fulfillment.
3. The obsessing desire for quick profits rather than steady, normal returns.
4. Failure to develop cheap but efficient and reliable power plants.
5. Too many airplane manufacturers.
6. No development of markets.

Crowds flock to the most dangerous turns of an auto race. Attention is always riveted on the "dip of death" in a circus rather than on a cleverly trained animal.

Robert Fulton’s Clermont once crowed the Hudson’s banks and Stevenson’s Rocket brought thousands to stare, deprecate, or wonder.

Only ten years have passed since a feature of Buffalo Bill’s show was a "horseless carriage."

We are all looking for thrills. But, once this appetite is satisfied it is almost impossible to arouse scientific or commercial interest in the thriller unless its performances have demonstrated the practicability of the device, and unless they have created a demand for it and made it an urgent necessity.

Airplane exhibitions once provided remunerative thrills. But people quickly learned that as the number of airmen increased, the number of accidents increased; that manufacturers were exploiting merely the novelty and not the usefulness of the product; and they could witness flights from outside the fence quite as well as if they paid a dollar to enter the aerodrome.

They began to look elsewhere than to the airplane for their amusement. Airplanes became too common to lead people even to turn their heads to look at them, let alone pay to see them.

The price of passenger flights fell in twelve short months from $500 to $25, $10, and even $5. Satiety had overtaken curiosity. The wonder of one year had become the commonplace of the next.

Unfortunately for the honest manufacturer, he soon had to cope with a factor even more discouraging than public apathy. The dishonest element that attaches itself to every new industry did not fail to grasp the opportunity presented by the art of flying.

Soon aviation was crowded with this irresponsible, get-rich-quick-gentry. Exhibition flyers frequently left the ground only when they cared to and then for such short flights as they cared to make.

Alleged self-styled aviators, incompetent in every respect, and with machines so badly constructed as to be dangerous to the spectators, cut to one-half the prices asked by good flyers.

Outrageous promises, that ranged from the agreement to land from any building in a city to the free carrying of passengers in machines which later proved unable to leave the ground with only the pilot aboard, were frequent.

President W. Linford Smith of the Pittsburg Aero Club was driven to comment:

Undoubtedly the reader, as he opened his morning paper, has read from time to time the announcement that "John Jones, the famous aviator, will today fly over the city" or "will start on a record breaking cross-country journey" or "will fly to shore from the Hamburg-American liner Potsdam, leaving the vessel’s deck after she has passed forty miles out to sea."

Thereafter nothing more has been heard of John Jones’s promised flight. This has happened so frequently, there has been such a discrepancy between promise and performance by an all-too-numerous type of aviator, that nowadays the public is placing aviation statements on the same level as the "wolf, wolf" cry of the fabled shepherd.

It has been the marvel of many who know the care with which newspapers are edited that space is so forthcoming for almost any kind of statement so long as it was the magic word "aviation" in it.

The most nonsensical utterances of half-crazy inventors whose actions showed they had not the first idea of even the rudiments of human flight; lengthy descriptions of revolutionary machines which turned out to be abortive copies of standard types built by some chauffeur or street cleaner or shoemaker in a barn, hayloft, or cellar. Manifestly puerile statements are made regarding the future of the airplane, and how it will drive both railroad train and steamship out of business.

For these and similar absurdities, there seems to be a 365-days long silly season against which not even the sanest city editor appears immune.

Conceive any normal man swallowing the yarn that the Pennsylvania railroad had a new locomotive that would haul a twelve-car train without stopping from Chicago to New York in ten hours!

Yet is that half as stupid as the widely statement made a few months ago by a well known British airman, that an airplane with a 2,000-hp motor carrying 4,000 people will cross the Atlantic in 15-hours.

Maybe someday a man will go to bed in New York and awaken in London; also, there may come a time when a man will retire on earth and dress on Mars, but newspapers do not print serious articles in anticipation of the events.

Frank Coffyn, The Wright pilot who has carried more passengers that any other aviator in the world recently commented on the statement of a prominent cross-country flyer that he was going to start across the Atlantic next August in a hydro-biplane with himself and a mechanic as passengers and operators.

"He said he’s going to take 2000 gallons of gasoline with him," said Mr. Coffyn. "There’s a weight of 1,400 pounds to start with in fuel alone, not making mention of lubricant, food, etc. and Breguet, who managed last October to lift a total weight of about 1,400 pounds beside his machine stayed aloft for only 5-minutes!

Is it possible to cross the Atlantic in an airplane very soon? Why, it’s possible now --- but only Heaven knows when it will be accomplished!"

It is on such publicity that many aviation stock companies are formed. Generous promoters have dropped mines and covered carpet-tacks for the more lucrative airplane. Today the market is fairly flooded with $1, $5, and $10 shares of aviation shares of aviation stock, whose promoters offer anything from 7 to 50 percent dividends. Rich as is the future of the flying machine, the airplane industry can no more support get-rich-quick parasites than can any other business.

There is general recognition that the heart of the airplane is its motor. Yet, though the United States gave the flying machine to the world and today manufactures more automobiles than all countries put together, no American airplane motor has yet been developed that compares in efficiency with a French engine.

That foreign motor today holds every world’s record, excepting only Loridan’s duration flight. But its cost, particularly with 45 percent import duty added, practically prohibits its general use in this country.

What a field there is here for our automobile manufacturers! There is an Aladdin fortune awaiting the man who delivers a dependable efficient, economical 50-horsepower airplane engine, weighing not over 3-pounds per horsepower, for $1,000, or even $1,500. For the very best flying machine built today can be produced for $500 except for its power plant. And it is in the manufacture and sale of a reliable airplane retailing at about $3,000 that the biggest dividends will be found.

There are now in the United States six airplane-manufacturing firms. All six companies sold fewer than 20 airplanes in this country in 1911. The Wright, Farman, Bleriot, Nieuport, Breguet, and Deperdussin firms are the only manufacturers who earned $25,000 clear last year.

Suppose that the Wrights in this country or the Farmans in France – both tremendously wealthy firms - were to cut the price of their machines to $3,000. What would happen to the builders? The airplane has out stripped the industry. Its mechanism is far ahead of its commercial development.

I asked several men prominently identified with American aviation to give Harper’s Weekly their ideas as to what was the matter commercially. Here is what they said:

Wilbur Wright: "What my brother and I want to do is to conserve the business. What the average man, neither daredevil nor simpleton, can safely do with the airplane is the problem with which we are concerned. There is a splendid future for the flying machine, but conservative and sound business methods must be invoked to develop and sustain the industry. To my mind miscellaneous exhibitions and too much of the wrong kind of publicity are the chief troubles of aviation. No other industry would stand for these features. Aviation cannot."

Ernest L Jones, editor of Aeronautics, oldest American periodical in its field: "There are too many fakers in the business. The stock-selling crowd has scared away the conservative rich man who might back a well-run firm. There has been too little commercial development of the airplane and too much hip-hip-hurrah business."

"Including airplanes and accessories, not more than four American firms are doing business on a sound scale and basis. The others have been too busy getting the easy money and letting future development take care of itself."

Frank Coffyn, leading passenger-carrying aviator: "Almost every ill to which aviation in this country has fallen heir to is due to the exhibition circuit end of the game and to faking that has been done there and in publicity. It is curious, too, how much more national governments are bent on testing the merits of airplanes for war purposes than for trade or travel. Surely if flying machines meet the exacting demands of military authorities as machines of destruction, they are certain to be a great deal more useful and far more numerous in the occupations of peace."

Hugo Gibson, propeller manufacturer: "The support aviation gets today is on the basis of unreasonable profits from spectacular and death-invoking antics. Aviation is a science and requires an army of scientific workers, not nerveless incompetents or high-strung scatterbrains. Businessmen are needed in aviation, even more than engineers."

"There is no finer or more exhilarating sport than flying. And in the hands of careful, conservative pilots, knowing the exact capacity of their machines, the present-day airplane is considerably safer than the public has been led to believe it is. But trying to loop-the-loop, ego-born steep dives and the Dutch roll, excessive banking, spiral end-on turns, racing around one, or even 5-mile tracks, etc., are not the functions of the flying machine. Performing any or all of these "stunts" avails nothing in giving us the commercial airplane which may be relied upon as the automobile is today for pleasure and for trade."

The airplane has a future that neither expert nor lay mind can define. The serious, practical side of flying is an almost an unknown quantity because aviation has so far been mostly circus "stunts." Shorn of these features and the end of exhibitions and meets are fortunately now in sight. The airplane will come into its own.

The First Flight Society inducted NASA retired aeronautics engineer Richard Whitcomb, who made supersonic flight possible, into the Paul E. Garber First Flight Shrine at the Wright Brothers National visitor’s center in Kill Devil Hills, NC, during celebration activities commemorating the 104^th anniversary of flight on Dec. 17, 2007.

His portrait will be displayed in the flight room of the visitors’ center where it will join those of other aviation pioneers. The tradition began in 1966 with the portrait of the Wright brothers.

Whitcomb followed in the best tradition of the Wright brothers, who when confronted with the claim of experts that man could never fly, showed them that they were wrong.

Whitcomb was also faced with the claim that man could never fly faster than the speed of sound. Many in the aeronautical experts in the 1930s and 1940s believed in the existence of an invisible barrier in the sky that prevented aircraft from flying faster than the speed of sound, which was approximately 700 mph.

Government researchers at McCook Field in Dayton and others first identified the problem on aircraft propellers in the 1920s. When the tips of a whirling propeller approached the speed of sound, it lost efficiency because of a drastic loss of lift. They simply could not turn any faster.

The big problem seen by the experts was the problem of overcoming drag. Both the Wrights and Whitcomb used their intellect and wind tunnel tests to solve the problem of drag. Tom Crouch, senior curator at the Smithsonian’s air and Space Museum noted that "Whitcomb battled the enemy of drag and won."

The problem of drag facing the designers of supersonic aircraft was the large increase in drag associated with the formation of shock waves that occurred at speeds just below and above the speed of sound (transonic speeds). An airplane can experience severe instability at these speeds.

When an aircraft moves at the speed of sound, shock waves build up in front of it creating a single, very large shock wave. During transonic flight, a plane must pass through this large shock wave as well as contending with the instability caused by air moving faster than sound over parts of the wing and slower in other parts. The phenomenon is explained by the Bernoulli principle.

One day late in 1951 Whitcomb relates that he was thinking about the problem and trying to visualize the air passing over a body at transonic speed when he came to the startling realization that the air passing over a body at transonic speed behaved in a different way than the experts thought. He concluded that what really caused transonic drag was not the diameter of the fuselage alone, rather it was the drag rise created by the total cross-sectional area of the fuselage, wings and tail.

Since wings added most to this area, drag could be reduced significantly by tucking in or narrowing the fuselage where the wings attached and then expanding the fuselage at their trailing edges. Using this configuration the air would be displaced less violently, the waves and drag would diminish, thus enabling an airplane to pass more easily through the transonic zone.

He concluded that the same amount of air had to be replaced to get out of the way to make room for the plane, but with the trimmed down "wasp waist," the air would not be displaced in such violent shock patterns. The configuration became known as the "area rule." It was shaped more like an old-fashioned soda bottle.

His discovery was particularly timely because at that moment virtually all military fighters aimed at sustained level supersonic flight was doomed to remain below Mach 1 because of the incapability of the jet engines of the time to overcome the tremendous drag rise.

On August 1954, his ideas were confirmed in practice when a Grumman F9F-9 successfully breezed through sonic speed in level flight without the use of an afterburner, the first time this had been done.

Whitcomb was awarded the prestigious Collier trophy for his achievement and many other awards.

He continued to refine and extend his basic concept for commercial jets and well as military planes.

In the 1960s he conceived the "supercritical airfoil," an airfoil whose primary attribute was improved performance at high subsonic speeds.

In the 1970s he developed what is called "winglets." These are devices placed at the wingtips, normal to the wingspar, extending both upward and downward. The devices reduce wingtip vortices and the induced drag such vortices create. The aerodynamic efficiency of the wing is improved and fuel consumption reduced as well.

Tom Crouch notes that "Dick Whitcomb’s intellectual fingerprints are on virtually every commercial aircraft flying today."

Whitcomb’s personality was in many respects similar to that of the Wrights. He was a conservative and shy and didn’t like administrative duties. In the laboratory he was a creative radical and in some respects management didn’t know quite know how to deal with him, so they pretty much let him do what he wanted.

Anousheh Ansari, 40, has purchased her $20 million ticket and rode the Russian Soyuz TMA-9 spaceship to the international Space Station on September 18, 2006. with her were Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and Spanish-born U.S. astronaut Lopez-Alegria.

She is the fourth tourist to visit the space station.

Ansari, born in Iran, is an American entrepreneur millionaire from Plano, Texas.

As a young girl in Iran, she used to gaze at the stars and dream of some day flying into space. Her opportunity came when the Russians began selling tickets to the International Space Station in 2001 to raise money for their space program.

A Virginia based company, Space Adventures, brokers the tickets for the Russians. She has spent the last few months training for the trip at the NASA’s Johnson Space Center and at Star City outside Moscow.

Ansari is no stranger to space adventures. In 2001, she and her brother-in-law contributed most of the $10 million X-Prize whose objective was to spur commercial space travel. Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne won the prize in 2004.

Ansari can afford the steep ticket price. In 1993, she and her husband, Hamid, quit their jobs at MCI and started their own telecommunications company. They took a big gamble at the time. They cashed out their retirement funds of $50,000 to start the new company. Seven years later they sold the company for $750, 000.

She emigrated to the United Stated in 1984 at the age of 16. The Shah had been overthrown and as a woman she would have no opportunity to study science at an Iranian university. In America she received her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science at George Mason University and a master’s degree from George Washington University.

Ansari was listed in Fortune’s Magazine’s "40 under 40" in 2001 and honored by Working Woman Magazine as the winner of the year 2000 National Entrepreneurial Excellence Award.

While in the space station for eight days, she will be conducting blood and muscular experiments for the European Space Agency. She believes that entrepreneurial minds and money will speed innovation. She hopes that her example will spur others to explore space for the future of mankind.

Orville and Wilbur Wright not only manufactured bicycles, they were active cyclists who took long rides and participated in bicycle races. Wilbur describes one fun ride around the Dayton area of 31 miles. Orville won races and medals.

My son Don, is an aeronautical engineer who works for the FAA, enjoys riding bicycles and belongs to a racing team in Seattle.

This year he journeyed to Europe to participate in the 2006 Tour De France pre-race over the Alps. Some 8,000 cyclists took advantage of the opportunity. The route included three beyond category climbs, and one 1^st category climb over a 104-mile ride including the leg killing combination of ascents and descents of the massive Galibier and Le Telegraph passes.

The official start of the race was at the bottom of the L’ Alpe d’Huez. As I am wrote this, I watched the Tours 15^th stage in which Floyd Landis won the Yellow Jersey on this mountain. The 13.8-kilometer ride to the top includes 21 hairpin switchbacks. An estimated 1 million spectators watched.

Floyd Landis went on to win the yellow jersey in Paris for the Tour.

Here is the story in Don’s words:

"Whoo, I made it! Three beyond category climbs, a 1^st category climb and 104 miles – more difficult than any single stage in the Tour. I think it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve concluded that a 39x27 is not a low enough gear for 16,000+ feet of climbing at grades of 7-11% for miles on end. A compact crank, or at least 38 x 28, would have definitely helped.

The start was pretty disorganized. I stayed in a hotel at the top of the Alpe d’ Huez. The start was in Bourg d’Oisan, at the base of the Alpe at 7:15 AM. We had been told that there was a free shuttle if you sign up in advance, but none of the people I talked to knew anything about it. That turned out not to be a big deal as it gave me the opportunity to descend the Alpe, something I had only done previously in a driving thunderstorm.

I flew down the switchbacks, passing plenty of other riders and a few cars, and was having a great time. It had taken me a little over an hour to go up it a couple of years ago; it only took 15-18 minutes to go down it.

The start was supposed to be in waves of a thousand every fifteen minutes or so. With a number of 3726, I figured that I would be starting around 8 AM. They directed all the riders down this side road into a big disorganized mass. At one point there was a diversion for numbers higher than 600. (There were more than 8,000 riders registered for this insanity.)

I saw a number of riders less than 600 take that lane, as it was not backed up like the main lane was. We progressed forward very slowly, then finally were able to get on our bikes and ride forward, still very slowly. At one point, the lane for the riders with numbers greater than 6,000 re-merged with the main lane – all the riders who went down that lane actually got a shortcut!

Suddenly, I was riding under what looked to be the start banner and realized that I had just started! Sure enough, it was around 8 AM.

We had about 10-15 miles of flat road before the first climb. People were generally going pretty slow, so I spent a lot of time trying to find my way around and through large groups of cyclists. We went by a couple of intersections with median strips where they had a policeman waving yellow triangular flags over their heads like at the Tour de France. Pretty cool.

When we started up, my plan was to take it easy up the first two climbs, hopefully saving something for the Galibier and the finish up Alpe d’Huez. Even though I was trying to go easy, I was steadily passing scores (hundreds) of riders who were basically spread across the entire width of the narrow road. Motorcycles with the race kept going up the left side of the road, trying to maintain a little space over there for any traffic that might be foolish enough to be coming the other way.

At the top of the Col du Glandon (which we did instead of Col de la Croix Fer because of road maintenance), things came to a halt. I followed some other cyclists who had gotten off their bikes and were hiking over the Glandon on foot above the road. There was a water stop at the top of the mountain, and I thought that was what had caused the jam-up. When we got back to the road on the other side of the mountain, there were police blocking the road.

The descent off of Glandon is very steep and tricky, with a sheer drop-off on one side. The police said that there had been an accident involving 5 cyclists. I never heard what had happened or how the cyclists were.

I ended up being delayed over an hour. I later heard a number of cyclists called it quits at that point and turned around. I was worried about how they would start us going again, and did not relish the thought of descending the Glandon with thousands of other cyclists at the same time. Fortunately, they let us off in small groups. As on Alpe d’Huez, I was not impressed with the descending skills of the other cyclists. I flew down that thing, again passing hundreds of cyclists on the long descent. The switchbacks were tight and unforgiving, but they were easy to see and slow down for.

On the flats between the Glandon and the Col du Telegraph, I again could not find a group going the speed I wanted to go. I couldn’t even find a group that was maintaining 20 mph. Finally, after passing a lot of groups, one group latched on to me, then some of their guys took some pulls. (Most of the riders were content to let anyone pull forever.) One guy finally came up and pulled for the last few miles at 25 mph – just what I was looking for. And he didn’t mind staying up there. At one point, I went up alongside him and told him we were doing a great job –- he just said that he flats.

At the base of the Telegraph, I was out of water, so I stopped at a bar to get some. It took me about 10-15 minutes just to get a water bottle filled. I started up the Telegraph, thinking that it was the shortest and easiest of the climbs, again passing other cyclists at a good clip. After a little bit, I came upon a sign that said 10k to the summit. I was hoping it was going to be more like 5k at that point, as I was starting to feel it. At 3k to go, I was really running low on energy, and for the first time, although I was still passing a good number of cyclists, I was also being passed by several groups.

Finally, the summit, and another good, though much shorter descent before the next climb, the monster Galibier (above 9,000 feet in elevation). I knew I was in need of some solid food (gels and Power Bars just weren’t cutting it at that point). I stopped at a little kind of drive-in food stand that was selling sandwiches and pizza. Pizza sounded good to me, so I ordered one. When it came, I didn’t realize how big it was going to be. I wolfed down half of it, then offered the rest to the other emaciated riders waiting in line for food. Then it was time to start the Galibier.

I remembered the Galibier from having ridden it a few years ago as very long, but not very steep. However, with the amount of energy I’d already expended, and the heat, which was making it very difficult to stay hydrated, it seemed a lot harder this time. It was here that I decided that my gear selection was inadequate – my normal cadence in my lowest gear resulted in a speed of about 7 mph, 6 mph was okay, but I was starting to get bogged down. 5 mph was a really slow cadence, and if I was under 5 mph, I felt like it was time to stop.

All those people I’d been passing had lower gears that would allow a higher cadence at lower speeds, saving their legs a bit for the distance. I ended up having to stop 2 or 3 times on the way up the Galibier. It was at this point that I started wondering if I was going to complete the ride. (Actually, I’d been wondering that since the day before when I took a little recon ride that my legs didn’t like too much, and started wondering about my gearing.) At the top, I took a quick stop for more water and some orange and banana slices that they had. I knew that it would be pretty much all downhill from there until Alpe d’Huez.

Again, the descent was loads of fun. The first part is more technical (and more exposed). I remember that the other time I’d done it, I thought I would never want to do it in a race because of the exposure – if you missed a turn on some of those turns, it was a long way down. But this time, maybe knowing what to expect, I didn’t think it was bad at all. The descents were definitely the most fun part of the whole event and well worth the price of admission by themselves.

I was again passing large number of riders, but when the road finally straightened out a bit, a group latched onto me and we started riding together. It was a good thing, too, because it was a headwind the whole way back. Even though it was downhill, when the grade lessened, the headwind was making it a bit difficult to go it alone. After a slight uphill that detached a number of in our group, five of us finally started riding in a continuously rotating paceline, which was necessary due to the wind.

We all stopped at the final food stop at the base of Alpe d’Huez. It was about 4:15 PM. If I hadn’t been delayed an hour at the Col du Glandon, I would have still had a shot at a gold medal if I could get up the Alpe in about an hour. Well, I could do that on fresh legs, but not on toasted ones like I now had. I was kind of glad that I didn’t have a shot at that because all I wanted to think about now was surviving.

It took me about a ½ hour to eat, drink, fill water bottles, and convince myself that I had better get started. I knew that the first 4 switchbacks were the hardest, at grades over 11%, so I set a goal of making it to switchback 17 before thinking about stopping (The numbers get smaller as you ride up the Alpe).

I didn’t make it. I had to stop at 18. Then I started having some chain skipping problems, so I had to stop a couple more times to deal with that. The places that I had remembered it as being less steep were still very difficult. What had taken me over an hour a few years ago (when I was not trying to go real hard) took me nearly 2 hours (1:45 to 1:50) this time, including about 3 or 4 stops. Some riders were walking their bikes, but most had those infuriating low gears that they could continue to ride in even though they were going just slightly faster than a walking pace. It was sure faster than I was going while I was stopped, though!

It eases off in the last couple of kilometers as you go through the alpine village at the top. The last kilometer really eases off, then it goes a little downhill through a roundabout, then around a left hand to an uphill finish. I was waiting for that and really kicked it up for the finish, jumping to the big ring for the little downhill and sprinting past some riders on the finishing uphill.

It was kind of cool in that they had the final 1 k blocked off with the Tour de France type fencing, and there was a grandstand set up with people cheering you on. There wasn’t any 1 k kite or banner, but the finish banner was pretty neat.

As soon as I crossed the finish line, I stopped and bent over my bike. Then I noticed that the place where your timing chip actually recorded your finish was a few feet further on, and all the people I had just passed were going by me to the electronic finishing lanes.

Oh well, what else? I rolled forward to the electronic finish and got my official time – 10 hours and 33 minutes – good enough for a silver medal (which you had to purchase).

Well, that’s it for my excellent adventure (for the old guy from Newcastle, Washington)."

Comment: I would say so! For a guy in his late 40s, his performance was simply amazing.

The first concerns the Space Shuttle. The next flight of the shuttle is scheduled for July 1. Two NASA engineers voiced their concern that the shuttle isn’t ready to fly.

Bryan O’Connor, NASA’s lead safety official, and Christopher Scolese, its chief engineer voted "no go" when agency officials met recently at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In an unusual move the rest of the officials voted yes for an ontime launch including NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

The concern of the two officials, who voted against the launch, was that the insulating foam that covers 34 metal brackets on the shuttle’s external fuel tank might dislodge during launching and damage the spacecraft’s protective heat shield beyond repair.

The July 1 launch was approved despite the objections because in the event of a damaged heat shield, the astronauts could stay in the International Space station until rescued by another shuttle.

The loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew on Feb. 1, 2003 was caused by foam debris. NASA engineers have redesigned the fuel tank and removed most sources of large pieces of potentially damaging debris.

However, during the shuttle Discovery launch last July, a hazardous amount of foam fell from its tank. As a result NASA engineers have further reduced the amount of foam used.

O’Connor and Scolese believe that the foam issue is still not fully resolved. They note that their concern is with the fate of the shuttle and not the safety of the seven-man crew of Discovery who can remain in the International Space Station in an emergency.

Update: Charlie Camarda, a member of the astronaut corps and long time NASA engineer, was removed from his job for his safety views. He wrote an e-mail to his engineering team saying that he was most proud of all of them at the flight readiness review meetings "when you stood up and presented your dissenting opinions and your exceptions/constraints for flight."

Camarda told colleagues that he was forced out as director of engineering at Johnson Space Center after praising colleagues who dissented about going forward with the next flight of Discovery. He said he refused to step down from the high-level mission management team and "asked that if I would not be allowed to work this mission that I would have to be fired from my position and I was."

For his work at NASA, Camarda received seven patents and more than 21 NASA awards for his technical innovations and accomplishments.

The second event concerns commercial airplanes landing in wet or icy weather.

On Dec. 8 last year, a Southwest Airlines jet (Flight 1248) skidded off the runway on to a highway while landing at Midway Airport, Chicago and crushed a car, killing a 6-year-old boy.

At a two-day FAA hearing last week new regulations were announced that would require pilots to add a buffer of at least 15% to their stopping-distance estimates on wet or icy runways.

The new rules, according to FAA airplane performance engineer Don Stimson (my son), mandate that when conflicting or mixed assessments of runway conditions are issued, pilots must use the worse case scenario, effectively erring on the conservative side.

The pilots of Flight 1248 had calculated much shorter stopping distances for their landing at Midway, 5,778 feet under poor runway conditions to 5,253 feet under fair conditions. Midway’s longest runway is 6,522 feet long, but obstructions outside the airfield prohibit landing on the first 696 feet.

Under the new rules, a stopping distance of 8,535 feet must be available for a plane comparable in weight and landing speed to the Southwest 737-700 involved in the Dec. 8 accident based on conditions of the runway that day.

Pilots and safety board investigators rated the first half of the Midway runway as fair and the second half poor just before the accident.

The final report and safety recommendations are expected to be released in early 2007.

People were still trying to invent the airplane five years after the Wrights had flown.

The story of one such attempt August 8 was published in August 9, 1908 by the Inter-Mountain Republican newspaper in Salt Lake City.

Here is the article:

Arioch Wheeler of Mianus, Conn., after weeks of reading about Count Zeppelin and Henri Farman, who are conquering the air, opined that he, Arioch, would make a flight, so he constructed for himself a pair of paper wings and today he suddenly left his turnip patch and made a wild dash for Hiram Johnson’s barn.

He clambered to the roof and blithely adjusted the wings.

Arioch then posed gracefully, took in the wind situation and then laid his course across the Mianus River, a stream 12 feet from the barn.

Some farmers were near by and saw the man perched on the roof. They yelled to him to come down but he merely stretched out his hands and shrieked,

" I am Count Zeppelin. I am going to fly."

In an instant Arioch had flung himself into the air --- and also into the Mianus River. The wings kept him afloat till he was rescued.

He has been advised to patent his wings and dub them life preservers.

Ever since the Wright brothers designed an airplane in Dayton that flew at Kitty Hawk, mankind has been fascinated with defying gravity and setting new records in the air.

The January 2005 of Carolina Journal, a monthly journal of news, analysis and commentary, contained the following article:

Comment: I thought we saw the end of this debate before the centennial celebration, but apparently not. Ohio has the right to the claim of being "birthplace of aviation" for the clear fact that the Wright Flyer and its predecessor kites and gliders were conceived, designed and built in Dayton, Ohio.

The Wrights selected Kitty Hawk as the site for flight testing because of its wind, sand, and isolation.

I know Roy Cooper and think very highly of him. I voted for him. But in this case he is wrong. This argument about mottoes is becoming tiresome. It is time to move on.

It was an exciting moment on October 4, 2004 when SpaceShipOne completed its mission by flying seventy miles into space to win the X Prize.

The media contained pictures of Burt Rutan, the designer of the craft, the pilots Michael Melvill and Brian Binnie who flew the two flights, and Paul Allen who provided most of the funds. You had to look hard to find the short, smiling man who was responsible for the prize.

His name is Peter H. Diamandis, and he is an interesting story in itself. Diamandis became obsessed with space as a boy when he watched the Apollo moon landing. He too wanted to go there.

He decided to become an Aerospace engineer and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was active as a student in pursuing his interest in space travel.

His father was a medical doctor and his parents were not so sure he was pursuing the right career. His mother wanted him to be a doctor and follow in the footsteps of his father. To please her, after graduation from MIT he attended Harvard Medical School and earned his medical degree.

He now had two degrees but his passion was still space travel. In 1986, after the Challenger disaster, he concluded that the best and quickest way to open the space frontier was through the private sector.

From that time on he has dedicated himself to find a way to achieve the advancement of human spaceflight by making space travel accessible to everyone.

He had a vision, but how does one make it happen. He had supporters as well as many doubters. The break came when Greg Marynjak, a college friend and now the X Prize Foundation Director, gave Diamandis a copy of Charles Lindbergh’s autobiography "The Spirit of St. Louis."

The aviation legend, Lindbergh, was motivated by the $25,000 prize that Raymond Orteig established for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Lindbergh’s triumphal flight on May 21, 1927 opened the way for rapid commercialization of flight.

Diamandis wasn’t so much interested in Lindbergh after reading the book as he was in the idea of a prize to motivate innovation. He reasoned, why not create a space prize and get some St. Louis businessmen to back it just as Lindbergh had done. He decided to call it the X Prize worth $10 million.

In March of 1996, he followed Lindbergh’s script and invited a group of St. Louis businessmen for drinks at the historic Racquet Club, using the same table used by Lindbergh a generation before.

Diamandis told them that St. Louis could be a "gateway to the stars" while showing them old clips of James Stewart playing Lindbergh in the movie, "Spirit of St. Louis."

It must have been quite a show. He picked up $25,000 from the seven businessmen in attendance. It was a great start.

On May 18^th under the Arch in St. Louis, he announced the formation of the X Prize Foundation. The first privately financed team to fly a reusable spacecraft would win the $10 million dollar X Prize. Charles Lindbergh’s grandson, Eric Lindbergh, was there as a vice president and trustee of the X Prize Foundation.

Eric two years ago celebrated the 75^th Anniversary of his grandfather’s famous flight across the Atlantic by duplicating the flight by himself.

Also in attendance in St. Louis was Burt Rutan, the ultimate winner of the first X Prize with his SpaceShipOne. He was also the first to register for the prize. Later he admitted that he didn’t think about designing a spacecraft until 1999. He begin a full development program two years later after Paul Allen agreed to provide most of the financing for the effort.

After the initial burst of enthusiasm, Diamandis found it hard to raise the prize money. The big corporations shied away because they were afraid that the mission would fail and they didn’t want their corporate name attached to a failed spacecraft.

Despite round the clock fund raising efforts by Diamandis, the X Prize Foundation was potentially looking at bankruptcy as 2001 began. Then by chance, Diamandis read a Fortune magazine article about a couple of Texan telecommunication entrepreneurs who were interested in space travel.

He rushed to Dallas and met Anousheh Ansari and her brother-in-law, Amir. Bingo! He received a commitment of more than $1 million. The X Prize race was still on, but now under the banner of the renamed Ansari X Prize and Anousheh Ansari became a board member of the X Prize Foundation.

In another interesting strategy by Diamandis, who is always thinking out-of-the-box, an insurance company will be the entity that actually pays the prize money. The X Prize foundation (Ansari) paid an insurance company, Bermuda-based XL Capital, for a special "hole-in-one" insurance policy in which the insurance company essentially bets against success. The insurance company lost and must pay the prize money.

The X Prize Foundation will award the X Prize at a ceremony in St. Louis on November 6^th.

The X Prize, said Diamandis, is the beginning, it is not the end of space competitions. Twenty-six teams had registered for the X Prize and many plan to continue their effort to fly a spacecraft.

The one closet to launch is the da Vinci project. The team leader, Brian Feeney, hopes to try a launch by November 1.

Also, the X Prize Foundation has announced an annual X Prize Cup to be held in Las Cruces, New Mexico that will serve as an air show for spacecraft. Prizes will be awarded in categories such as: fastest turnaround time, maximum number of passengers per flight, maximum altitude, fastest flight time, and coolest ship. The event hopes to launch some fifty space flights over a 10-day period beginning in December 2006

SpaceShipOne was a suborbital achievement. The ultimate goal is for orbital flight. Robert Bigelow, who heads an aerospace company in Nevada, has announced a "Bigelow Prize" worth $50 million for 

See other articles on SpaceShipOne in archives/others.

It took six years to develop, but for the second time in five days, a piloted reusable suborbital spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, flew into the fringes of space, nearly 70 miles (367,442 feet) above the earth, before gliding back to a safe landing in the Mojave Desert. In so doing it flew seven miles higher than the arbitrary line marking the beginning of space and won the $10-million Ansari X Prize and became the first privately developed plane to rocket into space.

The previous record for a space plane was held by the military developed X-15 that reached an altitude of 67 miles (354,200 feet) in 1963.

The X prize-winning flight on October 4, 1904 coincided with the 43rd-anniversary of the Soviet Union’s 184-pound Sputnik I that triggered the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Also sadly, it coincided with the death of astronaut Gordon Cooper, 77, who flew the last Mercury mission-Faith 7 on May 1963.

There was jubilation close to that of the Wright Brothers achievement when the spacecraft landed. Some people have called the achievement a new era in flight and have compared the feat to the Wright Brothers historic flight, calling the Mojave the new Kitty Hawk. One observer remarked, "It feels a little bit like Kitty Hawk must have."

Unlike the Wright Brother’s flight nearly 101 years ago, which stirred little interest or press, the event was documented live on television and around the world, by many major news agencies, including CNN, ABC, Fox, Reuters, Associated Press, to name a few.

The X prize set requirements that included altitude (at least 100 kilometers), and vehicle reliability (the spacecraft flies twice within 2 weeks).

A piloted turbojet known as the White Knight carried SpaceShipOne to nearly 50,000 feet (above nearly 85% of the Earth’s atmosphere). There, SpaceShipOne fired its rocket for 84 seconds, climbing in a vertical trajectory at speeds of near three times the speed of sound. After reaching just under 70 miles above the Earth and experiencing several minutes of weightlessness, it coasted back into the Earth’s atmosphere where the pilot took over control and flew it as a glider to a landing at Mojave Airport.

It was a flawless flight in contrast to the two previous flights in which the pilot experienced control problems, but still completed the mission.

The X Prize foundation hopes to stimulate the same sort of proliferation of technologies and enterprise seen after the Wright brothers’ pioneering flight. Peter Diamandis, a businessman, established the X Prize eight years ago with the objective being to spur commercial space travel. He plans to present the $10 million dollar check to Mojave Aerospace Ventures in St. Louis on Nov. 6. Burt Rutan, the craft’s designer, and Paul Allen, Microsoft’s co-founder who provided some $20 million to support the project, founded the winning partnership known as Mojave Aerospace Ventures.

Anousheh Ansari, an Iran-born engineer who made a fortune in telecommunications provided most of the $10 million for the prize. The X Prize is modeled after the $25,000 Orteig Prize that was won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 for flying nonstop over the Atlantic Ocean. Lindbergh’s grandson, Erik Lindbergh, is a trustee and vice-president of the X Prize Foundation.

Rutan says he will share the prize money with his employees at Scaled Composites, his company. The prize attracted more than two dozen teams from around the world.

The Wrights also privately financed their Flyer, although they weren’t millionaires.

Rutan has designed some of the oddest and innovative airplanes in the world over a career of 30 years. Like the Wright brothers, he is known for putting together known technologies into innovative ways to form new systems.

Rutan designed Voyager, a plane that flew nonstop around the world without refueling. He is considered by some as a national treasure.

The SpaceShipOne demonstrates two technological breakthroughs. One is a safer hybrid rocket engine, the first developed for human space flight since 1972. The second is the use of the ship’s movable tail section that folds up to serve as an airbrake as the plane descends.

After the prize-winning flight of SpaceShipOne, Rutan said: "Our success proves without question that manned space flight does not require mammoth government expenditures. It can be done by a small company with limited resources and a few dozen dedicated employees."

In 1908, there were only 10 pilots in the world, including the Wright brothers. By 1912, after Wilbur flew in France in 1909, there were thousands of pilots. Many of the pilots must have said to themselves that if two bicycles makers can fly so can I.

Only 434 people have flown in space and they were trained and funded by governments. We now have two space pilots that have been awarded commercial astronaut wings by the FAA – Brian Binnie and Mike Melvill, the two pilots that flew the prize-winning flights. They are two of four pilots that have been trained to fly SpaceShipOne.

Binnie said after the second prize-winning flight, "flying this vehicle is literally a rush."

Diamandis has announced the foundation of an annual X Prize cup to begin in December 2006 to maintain the momentum by sponsoring "space races." The event aims to launch 50 space flights over a 10-day period with cash prizes given for such categories as altitude, speed and passenger capacity.

The British billionaire tycoon and owner of Virgin Airlines, Richard Branson, has joined the effort by announcing that he plans to take tourists to space for a fee of around $200,000. He has formed a space tourism company named Virgin Galactic to license the technology from Rutan’s Mojave Aerospace Ventures and for Scaled Composites to build the first of five space-liners next year and fly paying passengers in suborbital flights as early as 2007. The first space-liner has already been named – V.S.S. Enterprise.

Branson plans to locate ships in several countries. He has already received 5,000 inquiries for tickets.

Profits generated will be used to develop a new generation of spacecraft capable of orbital flights capable of visits around the moon and space hotels.

Some critics have denigrated the use of SpaceShipOne as a vehicle for tourism. The Wrights, too, didn’t have a clear idea of how to use the airplane. The first uses were military. It took another 20 years for commercial travel by airplanes to become practical.

X Prize supporters hope to demonstrate that low-cost space travel is practical and profitable. Over time private ventures are expected to cut the cost of space travel through volume, innovation and attention to the bottom line. The first NASA space shuttle flew in 1981. It costs NASA over $1 billion for each launch of the shuttle.

Space flights are not without risk. FAA’s Blakey said, "There will be a bad day sooner or later. As long as potential passengers truly understand the risks, the government approach would be caveat aviator. This country was founded on people who are risk-takers."

Rutan says he intends to build commercial craft that are at least 100 times safer than anything that has ever flown man to space.

See other articles on SpaceShipOne in archives/others.

On Wednesday September 29th SpaceShipOne successfully flew again in the pursuit of the X Prize competition worth $10 million. One more successful flight and they will have won it.

Here is the criteria for the winning the prize: the winning team must privately finance, build and launch a spacecraft that can carry three people 62 miles above the Earth’s surface, return safely to Earth, and then do it again within two weeks. Some 26 teams from seven countries are vying for the prize. The 62-mile threshold is generally accepted as the point where the Earth’s atmosphere ends and space begins.

The SpaceShipOne team is planning on completing the second flight requirement on Monday October 4^th, although they have until October 13 at 0834 to make the attempt.

On Sept. 29 at 0712 the SpaceShipOne rocket ship attached to the White Knight, the carrier airplane, left the Mojave, California runway before thousands of spectators. The White Knight with its payload climbed to about an altitude of 48,000 feet where SpaceShipOne detached from the White Knight and its rockets fired, sending SpaceShipOne roaring straight up for about 2 minutes. Its bright streak toward space could be seen from the ground.

Before reaching apogee the pilot, Mike Melvill, experienced some nervous moments as the spacecraft began to spin unexpectedly as it sped through space at nearly three times the speed of sound. Melvill said later that he figures there were at least 20 turns, with some of them at a high rate producing a corkscrew like flight path. "I’m not sure what kicked it off," he said. "It was probably something I did."

Rutan, the designer of the craft, didn’t think it was pilot error. Instead he suggested it was the result of the "dihedral effect" in which air buffeting the spacecraft at an angle causes it to roll.

The spin caused the worried flight controllers on the ground to advise Melvill to abort his ascent, but Melvill was close to the goal of at least 62 miles altitude and kept going a few more seconds before shutting down the engine eleven seconds earlier than planned.

He achieved 64 miles (337,500 feet). After landing at 0833 without further incident he said, "I did a victory roll at the top." "You just cannot describe what a feeling this is. Maybe I’m crazy."

The first test flight last June 21^st also had control problems. In this instance, the craft unexpectedly rolled to the left and then to the right and developed trim problems as the craft experienced horizontal wind shear. That problem was fixed and a new engine was designed to provide 20% greater thrust.

Experiencing control problems with experimental craft is not new. The Wright brothers had their own problems with controlling the Flyer.

An interesting aspect of the flight is that employees of Burt Rutan’s company, Scaled Composites, contributed personal items to simulate the weight of two additional passengers to provide the 400 pounds required under the X Prize rules. All items were carefully weighed and sealed in boxes. The items included tools, toys, pictures of children, a prized watch and the ashes of Rutan’s deceased mother.

The X Prize is spurring private space flight. Just recently Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Airways, announced the formation of a new company, Virgin Galactic, for the purpose of offering space jaunts in 2007. He plans to license the technology from Mojave Aerospace Ventures, a company founded by Rutan and Paul Allen, the billionaire cofounder of Microsoft and investor in the SpaceShipOne venture.

Tickets will cost about $208,000 for a 2-hour flight. They expect to fly 3,000 new astronauts in the first 5 years. Only a few civilians have flown into space and they paid much larger sums of money to ride on ships operated by the Russian government.

The biggest hurtle to space tourism may be legal and regulatory rather than technical. The House passed a bill earlier this year creating a licensing system. A similar bill is languishing in the Senate. A bill may not pass this year.

Melvill is scheduled to speak at the EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh on December 17^th at a program observing the anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight.