Zorba9
12-16-2003, 10:08 AM
December 17, 2003
At 10:32am the eyes of the world will be on Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
It is the 100th anniversary of "powered" flight! A $2,000,000 "exact" replica of the Wright Flyer will be flown for the first time. Two pilots (1 male, 1 female) will flip a quarter to decide who will fly the machine first, just as Wilbur and Orville Wright did 100 years ago on that fatefull morning. The Wright brothers had worked long and hard to reach this point. Many people had scoffed at them believing man would never fly. They were original thinkers who thought "outside of the box" much like Dean Kamen has done with his inventions for the last 25 years!
Today it is accepted knowledge amongst professional pilots that it takes approximatly 1000-1500 hours of flying time to reach a skill level where one is "ahead" of his airplane, and can make it preform to its limitations. The same can be said about driving a Segway. A new rider is cautious and is learning his machine. After a certain skill level is attained, you can make your Segway preform to its limitaions and you are in complete control over your machine!
I am a bio-aeronautical engineer (crop-duster). I fly all day long at 130mph, between trees and underneath power lines. I preform a precision aerial ballet' instinctively, after 26 years of doing such work. To watch me from the ground, looping, twisting, and diving my airplane back into the fields, it appears all one smooth and fluid motion.
My fellow SC members, we all drive our Segways with the exact same fluid motion. Segway gliding feels "exactly" like precision aircraft
flying! You fellow pilots here on SC know what I'm talking about. The joy and thrill of our Segway riding is "tantamount" to what Orville and Wilbur Wright created for us all 100 years ago.
Orville won the coin toss that morning and flew the first of 4 flights that day. He flew 120 feet. Wilbur flew next and made it approximatly 200 feet. Third flight was Orville's again, at 200 feet. Wilbur flew last that day and flew an astonishing 852 feet in 59 seconds!! Those flights that morning changed the world as we knew it back then.
Dean Kamen has changed our world with his original "out-of-the-box" thinking this last 25 years. The Stirling engine/water purifier is going to change our world quite a bit in the next few years!
Thanks Dean! You go dude!
KOG
Zorba9.....
At 10:32am the eyes of the world will be on Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
It is the 100th anniversary of "powered" flight! A $2,000,000 "exact" replica of the Wright Flyer will be flown for the first time. Two pilots (1 male, 1 female) will flip a quarter to decide who will fly the machine first, just as Wilbur and Orville Wright did 100 years ago on that fatefull morning. The Wright brothers had worked long and hard to reach this point. Many people had scoffed at them believing man would never fly. They were original thinkers who thought "outside of the box" much like Dean Kamen has done with his inventions for the last 25 years!
Today it is accepted knowledge amongst professional pilots that it takes approximatly 1000-1500 hours of flying time to reach a skill level where one is "ahead" of his airplane, and can make it preform to its limitations. The same can be said about driving a Segway. A new rider is cautious and is learning his machine. After a certain skill level is attained, you can make your Segway preform to its limitaions and you are in complete control over your machine!
I am a bio-aeronautical engineer (crop-duster). I fly all day long at 130mph, between trees and underneath power lines. I preform a precision aerial ballet' instinctively, after 26 years of doing such work. To watch me from the ground, looping, twisting, and diving my airplane back into the fields, it appears all one smooth and fluid motion.
My fellow SC members, we all drive our Segways with the exact same fluid motion. Segway gliding feels "exactly" like precision aircraft
flying! You fellow pilots here on SC know what I'm talking about. The joy and thrill of our Segway riding is "tantamount" to what Orville and Wilbur Wright created for us all 100 years ago.
Orville won the coin toss that morning and flew the first of 4 flights that day. He flew 120 feet. Wilbur flew next and made it approximatly 200 feet. Third flight was Orville's again, at 200 feet. Wilbur flew last that day and flew an astonishing 852 feet in 59 seconds!! Those flights that morning changed the world as we knew it back then.
Dean Kamen has changed our world with his original "out-of-the-box" thinking this last 25 years. The Stirling engine/water purifier is going to change our world quite a bit in the next few years!
Thanks Dean! You go dude!
KOG
Zorba9.....