16 thoughts on “The Wright Anniversary”

1. Heavier than air? It’ll never get off the ground. What a harebrained idea. Anybody that promotes such an idea is obviously an idiot. Only a moron would invest money in it. The human body couldn’t adjust to the environment if it did get off the ground. We’d have to terraform the atmosphere to sea level pressure first. Then there’s the increased radiation and lower gravity. Maybe in a few hundred years, but today? Pshaw!

   1. And the only way we could ever have heavier than air machines is if there were massive investments from the government routed through the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. We must also make sure that these machines are safe. If there is even one death, we should forbid any further experimentation until the proper regulations are in place.

2. Clearly the Wrights should wait and let the Government do it.

   1. At the same time the Wrights were working to develop their first Flyer, Samuel Langley was working on developing his “Aerodrome”. Langley had a $50,000 grant from the War Department plus another $20,000 from the Smithsonian Institution which was a lot of money back then. The Wrights used their own money. Langley’s Aerodrome failed while the Wrights succeeded. It’s estimated that they spent about $1,100 in total in their aviation experiments, including annual trips to Kitty Hawk starting in 1900.

      1. From that wiki entry:

         “In contrast to the Wright brothers’ design of a controllable airplane that could fly against a strong wind and land on solid ground, Langley sought safety by practicing in calm air over the Potomac River. This required a catapult for launching. The craft had no landing gear, the plan being to descend into the water after demonstrating flight which if successful would entail a partial, if not total, rebuilding of the machine”

         Public vs. Private, Expendable vs. Reusable.

         It’s almost as if history has a “repeat” button…

3. Jess Sponable likes to put up a slide showing contrasting quotes:

   NY Times Oct 9,1903:

   “A flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years.”

   Orville Wright’s diary, Oct. 9, 1903:

   “We started assembly today.”

   1. That’s the same paper that ridiculed Robert Goddard’s notion of flying rockets into space because “there is nothing to push against.” They finally issued an apology during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

4. “harebrained”

   Hey, watch it.

5. Oh come on… you’re making a mountain out of a molehill here, Rand.

   Sure, the Wrights succeeded, but it was a small accomplishment. After all, the market for heavier-than-air aircraft was fleetingly small; a few joyrides for the rich, a few scientific flights, and maybe the occasional military surveillance flight. Aircraft were just too costly, too fragile, and too temperamental to have any real prospect of market growth. Just like the market for space today, in fact. It’s every bit as limited when it comes to growth potential. The idea that we will ever see a demand for, say, increasing the tonnage-to-orbit per-month by a factor of 10 over current demand is as absurd as saying, in 1904, that we’d one day need coast to coast flights as often as every week to carry the mail, etc.

   Of course, if the government had been in charge of aviation, we’d probably have achieved the weekly coast-to-coast flight in time for the centennial of the Wright’s first flight…

   /snark

6. The 17th was yesterday here. Celebrated by completing another transcontinental flight in our Experimental home built. Now safely in a hangar at Serpentine Western Australia until after New Year.

   1. Sounds like a great flight. What type of homebuilt do you fly?

      1. Hi Larry, it is a BD-4. Great little airplane. Reasonably fast (140 knots), comfortable, economical and good payload. We get to visit some amazing and very nice places and meet great people.

         1. I’m familiar with the BD-4. It’s perhaps the only truly successful Jim Bede design and quite a good plane.

            1. There are those who would argue that the BD-1 was a successful design in that it became the Yankee, which begat the Traveler & Tiger. OTOH, it’s true that Jim Bede was no longer with the company when the first Yankee was sold.

7. Here’s the NR article:
   https://web.archive.org/web/20031219124747/http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/simberg200312170856.asp

8. Up and Back Down

   Pith and prescience. Hopefully soon we’ll be saying the same for Falcon 9R and yet another revolution.

   David

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