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Copyright © 1999 Adams Business Media, Inc. Would You Like A Reprint of
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--Richard Mandel Next month marks the 20th anniversary of manned flight across the English Channel. Not by a motorized aircraft, mind you, of the traditional sort -- it was twenty years ago that Brian Allen pedal-propelled the Gossamer Albatross for nearly three hours to make the crossing. That marvel of design was fathered by Dr. Paul MacCready, who is rightfully being hailed in many corners as one of the great engineers of this century. As the photo suggests, Dr. MacCready was an aviation enthusiast from an early age, who won model flight competitions in his teens, eventually learning to pilot full size planes, which included service as a Navy pilot during WWII. After earning his doctorate in aeronautical engineering at Cal Tech, he took up piloting gliders, winning national and international competitions. Rather than joining the engineering staff of a major aircraft manufacturer, Dr. MacCready eventually started his own companies -- the first was Metrology Research, Inc., which explored weather modification and atmospheric research, then AeroVironment, Inc. in 1971. While performing consulting work on environmental issues and wind power, it was at AeroVironment that the first successful human-powered airplane, the Gossamer Condor, was developed. The projects that followed also were expressions of a growing interest in environmentally sound transportation -- solar powered aircraft such as the Solar Challenger, the Sunraycer automobile that won a cross-Australia competition, and work on battery-powered cars like the GM Impact. It is this aspect of Dr. MacCready that is reminiscent of the words of Dr. Jacob Bronowski, in his masterwork The Ascent of Man. "Science," he wrote, "is a very human form of knowledge....we have to touch people." A casual conversation with Dr. MacCready turns away from his aircraft, starting with his evaluation that man and his domesticated animals now make up 98% of the mass of vertebrate animals living outside Earth's oceans. He stresses in lectures and interviews that we must seek out ways to reduce or stop the present application of resources, because they are limited, especially as 250,000 people are added to the population each day. His work should serve as a reminder to engineers and designers to keep in mind the bigger picture, the one that's as large as all outdoors, when ideas take wing. For more information, contact AeroVironment, Inc., 222
East Huntington Drive, Suite 200, Monrovia, CA 91016 (626) 357-9983. http://www.aerovironment.com Copyright © 1999 Adams Business Media, Inc. Would You Like A Reprint of
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Flights
of Fancy Grounded in Worldly Concerns