Supersonic Wright Flyer

[Norfolk and airspeed]

NASA Begins Supersonic Testing of 1903 Wright Flyer Replica. See http://www.wright-flyer.net/wrights.htm for details.

[Dave Incognito]

Interesting to say the least. I think I'm going to wait to see something released by NASA before I get too excited.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">The Wrights abandoned the canard surface in 1910 for what we now call a 'conventional' tail in the rear of the aircraft....Perhaps this change was the resignation by the brothers to flight in the subsonic range for the foreseeable future.</font>

From what I have read, the Wright brothers chose the canard design to prevent the nose down pitching motion after a stall. I'd love to see evidence suggesting they were already considering adapting their machines for supersonic flight...

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Flying is easy - just throw yourself at the ground and miss.

[Agaricus bisporus]

Great humour, but what strikes me from that article is the ludicrously antique and improbably oversized landing gear of that B52. Boy have we come on since then!

The Wright Flyer still looks to me as it always did, the most exciting thing contrived by man since the wheel. But what a shame fate didn't allow Leonardo da Vinci to do it.

Still, the world was changed by a pair of bicycle mechanics and not it's greatest genius, so God bless 'em.


[This message has been edited by Agaricus bisporus (edited 03 July 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Agaricus bisporus (edited 03 July 2001).]

[Dave Incognito]

I'm afraid I've walked straight into that one :rolleyes: http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/redface.gif

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Flying is easy - just throw yourself at the ground and miss.