| |
DG3MMF > SAT 16.12.02 13:19l 137 Lines 8040 Bytes #999 (60) @ WW
BID : H7608XOE9XPI
Read: DB0FHN GUEST
Subj: re: 100 YEARS OF FLIGHT
Path: DB0FHN<DB0ZWI<DB0HOT<DB0MRW<DB0PV<DB0FSG<IN3TRX<OE7XBB<OE9XPI
Sent: 021215/1557z @:OE9XPI.AUT.EU [Bregenz JN47VM] DP6.00 $:H7608XOE9XPI
From: DG3MMF @ OE9XPI.AUT.EU (Alexander)
To: SAT @ WW
X-Info: Upload without password authentication
hmm, i saw only a single reply that quoted parts of the original message.
i mean its okay if the USA want to celebrate the first engine flight
that happend ever on earth and further happend on their national teritory.
but its only a small snippet of the history of flight at all.
there were humans thinking about it much earlier, and even the given age is
somewhat doubtable.
let me name the mahabharata that mentiones flying vessels more than
4000 years before our time, the tales of nordic mythology that tell
about godness drving with its horses trough the sky and last but not
least the greek writers that described Ikarus and Daedalus escaping
hostage ship in the labyrinth by using bird feathers. Of course Ikarus
didnt succeed in the end but caused the first reported air traffic
accident, in his case caused by termal problems that disintegrated
the wings construction.
okay, i have to agree those are mythic reports that might resemble
to quite different real world events, like comets or are simply of
the sort of fairy tales. but it truely documents the quite old age
of flying and the strong attraction of doing it in the mankinds consience.
Now to start with real world flight, there was the chinese people that
built kites several hundred years ago up to quite big sizes.
This concept was used for quite various purposes including military,
entertainment, spiritual, signalling and last but not least metrological,
like when Benjamin Franklin prooved that flashlights are of electrical
characteristics.
related topics of technical design are wind mills and sailing, but those
do not deepen the topic of flicght, so they are just mentioned for
completeness.
Going on with flight and space flight in particular as we can see it as present
we have to consider rocket technics which is based in the old chinese
invention of shooting powder which was re-invented by german chemist
"Schwarz" in the middle ages. Whilst chinese culture made up more of
entertainment with fireworks and fireworks rockets, the european just
had the prioity of building shooting weapons with it. Of course, driving
a metal or stone ball of some few gramms to some 100 kilogramms trough
the air is related to flight.
in the above context there must be mentioned further the non explosives
driven flight objects that were present since the arrow was invented bz
by some late stone age and the sperrow was used in pre historic much earlier
for hunting.
carying some toxic substances as a payload for bringing it to a target is
already considered air transport by me. and remember Robin Hoods arrow
that was carying a written message all the time it hits the wall or table
of an enemy or friend.
But lets go on with real engineers. First of all there was Leonarod da Vinci
that had dozends of sketches of devices that were designed for the idea of
air flight. he was a great genius of his time, several hundreds of years
ahead of his time, and thus lacking the technical means for making parts
of his ideas beeing realized. namely materials were not yet invented that
had good enough hardness and strainability over its specific wheights
and the needed powering systems, like elektric or combustion engines.
The strongest powers of that ages were winds, water, coal and animals
like elephants, horses and donkeys.
Regardless of this, da Vinci was a great student of the nature, as shown
in his studies of the birds wing designs. His outraging sketches did include
the paraschute and a hang glider alike man attached mechanics for flying.
The future approaches in the glider sector were e.g. the sewer of Ulm,
a german city at the danube, that tried to cross that river from a tower
by just jumping from it. He did fail so far because his bird like vessel
didnt make it to the other shore, so he just got wet, but he did not at
all fall down straigt to the ground - maybe he did fly a bit, but not
really noticeable far. There was an aniversary event where several
historically and up to date hang gliders wanted to redo it. Out of some
hundreds, there were some dozned or so that made it to reach the other
side of the river. And lots of them already made it to the middle,
including several of the historycally founded ones.
The final success for manned hang down airflight without any engine
was the Otto Lilienthal flight in Berlin which closelz hits the 100 years
scope that the seen press message did mention. Lilienthal of course did
lots of such flight attempts until he wrecked his hang glider when he
was to eager for doing it again under unsave conditions. So far that i
do remember he had some inside injuries that caused his detah a few days after.
Whilst it was clear an prooven that manned air flight was working in
general, there were an engineering run all over the western world to
make trough air craft travel happen. Indeed it were not the task of
big companies or sponsored in a bigger dimension by countries or companies,
but it just took some spare money (like current race car hobbyists maybe)
in order to build a good airplane system and then add the needed
engine power (which was a bit more costly at this times).
In this little race for the sky, the USA won trough a short hop of
the plane built and driven by the brothers Orwell and Wilbur Wright.
Further improvements of the system were the rocket science of Werner v. Braun
in Penemünde which was later transfered to the USA and Russian space portfolio
after Germany was defeated in WW-II. Scond there was the turbine engine
for jet planes that was also developed in germany during WW-II and went the
same way but ended in civil and miltary air plane designs all over the world.
Outragous airplane designs were e.g. the Do-X large scale propellor driven
water plane from Dornier and the Ju-52 structured steel design from Junkers.
Let me now change the principle topic used for the flight. There were the
"lighter than air principle" that was described and used from the Mongolfiere
brothers, that used for the first thermal driven balloon voyage with a set
of animals. The age of this experiment is quite older than 100 years,
amd it has evolved trough the use of enclosed gasses like Helium or
Hydrogenium. Further the design of the ballon got quite advanced by
Graf Zeppelin with his so called fixed body airship that he build
several ever advancing giant versions at his facilitys in Firedrichshafen,
Bodensee. Until the fire catastrophe of the "Hindeburg" that was an ever
Bodensee. Until the fire catastrophe of the "Hindenburg" that was an every
time impressing appearence. (Most recent findings might indicate that the
Hindenburg has had an engine overheat that lead to an exlosion of the
used light wheight Diesel fuel, that further ignited the gas cell #4 in
the back half of the Zeppelin airship, whicht finally made the desaster.)
Even today balloons are used, for hobby, for metrology and for multiple
other purposes, and even there are "blimp" and real Zeppelins built and used.
Airflight has emerged to a high tech business and can be used by anyone
all over the world. Pioneers have prooved misc abilities, like the first
non stop Atlantic Crossing of Lindbergh and several other first doings.
Space flight has also undergone a rapid growth and is now costly high tech.
From the beginnings of the Sputnik beacon Sattelite to the first Moon landing
of a human, and the mars rover or the ISS in recnet times there has been much
evolvement in this sector, even if several of the space technology is 20 or
more years old in its design, like the NASa shuttle series or the way that
engineers do build space craft computer systems.
There is not only a single point in time to markt the start of air traffic,
it was a still running process of development and ideas, of persons and
their dreams, of what the nature showed us and what we unveiled by our
own experiments about the principles to anderstand and techniques to use.
73 de Alex. DG3MMF.
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
