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My Outro For My 20th Birthday

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My Outro For My 20th Birthday

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Coming up on Destination Tomorrow, we take a look at the first century of powered flight.

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We'll look back at how two relatively unknown bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, beat many of the world's foremost thinkers to become the inventors of the airplane.

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Plus, we will see what the future holds for aviation in the next hundred years.

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All this and more next on Destination Tomorrow.

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Hello, everyone. I'm Steele McGonigal. And I'm Kara O'Brien. Welcome to Destination Tomorrow.

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On this special episode of Destination Tomorrow, we'll look back at the first century of powered flight and the pioneers who designed and built the world's first flying machines.

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And we'll discover what the future might hold for aviation.

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Throughout history, man has always been intrigued with the idea of flight.

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However, most early aviation pioneers could not imagine flight as we know it today.

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With limited understanding of basic aerodynamic principles, many of these early pioneers attempted to build flying machines that were shape-like and emulated the flight of birds.

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The crude structures that they built generally relied on feathers and flapping wings as the catalyst for flight, ultimately leaving a trail of broken men and machines.

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History is inundated with stories of these birdmen jumping from towers and cliffs in a vain attempt to fly.

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Flight attempts gradually moved from small feathered devices toward larger structures, yet many of these attempts still ended in humiliation and sometimes even death.

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However, with all of these failures, early inventors were building a foundation of knowledge for the future of flight.

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Although many had tried to build machines that could fly, all earlier powered flight attempts had failed before the flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903.

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Though the Wright Brothers were the first to fly a heavier-than-air machine, people had been airborne long before the Wrights' first flight.

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The Montgolfier Brothers conducted the first public display of a hot air balloon flight near Paris in June of 1783.

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Balloons were also used extensively during the American Civil War to observe enemy positions, but balloons could not be controlled very easily, so the search continued to find a system that would allow heavier-than-air powered flight.

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In the late 1700s, Sir George Cayley of England helped define the problem of powered flight when he observed the problems of lift and drag of birds.

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Through a series of mathematical calculations and use of a device called the whirling arm, he tested numerous wing designs and eventually published many of his findings, providing a solid basis for flight pioneers of the future.

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One of the most notable pioneers that profited from this information was the German glider designer Otto Lilienthal.

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Lilienthal was often referred to as the Birdman because his glider designs were generally shaped like birds or bats.

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In his lifetime, he built 16 different glider designs, testing them from a man-made hill near his home.

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Unfortunately, he died August 10, 1896, after the glider he was testing spun out of control.

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His last words were, sacrifices must be made.

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Building off of the work of others, Orville and Wilbur Wright began working towards their goal of building the first heavier-than-air vehicle.

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In June of 1899, the Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian received a letter from Wilbur Wright asking for reading material that related to heavier-than-air flight.

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In his letter, Wilbur wrote that he was an enthusiast, but not a crank, with some pet theories of his own about flight.

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A few weeks after his letter was received, Wilbur received a package from the Smithsonian containing reading material and suggestions referencing virtually every text in existence that mentioned flight.

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With this information in hand, the Wright brothers started their crusade to build the first viable heavier-than-air ship.

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To help us understand how the Wright brothers accomplished their goals and how their early planes flew, Johnny Alonzo finds out how it works.

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On the morning of December 17, 1903, history was made off the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

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For the first time in history, man had achieved controlled flight of a heavier-than-air machine.

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The Wright brothers had achieved what all their predecessors had only dreamed of, flight.

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While many of their contemporaries had focused on very complicated designs, the Wrights chose a straightforward design as a means of accomplishing flight.

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Controlling the aircraft was a key area most designers took for granted.

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This is where the Wright brothers targeted most of their design and innovation.

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Most early inventors thought that flight control can be achieved by a pilot simply shifting his weight back and forth.

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The Wrights, on the other hand, knew that controlling the plane would be the key to successful flight.

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To find out how the Wrights accomplished the goal of flight, I spoke with Jim Cross to find out how it works.

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Well, it started when they were both pretty young.

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In fact, at the time, they were living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

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They didn't always live in Dayton, even though that's where they considered their home to be, Dayton, Ohio.

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Their father was a minister. In fact, he was a bishop in his church, and he would take long trips away from home.

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And when he would come back, he'd often bring the boys a gift.

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Well, one time he came back from a trip, and he walked into the room and had something in his hand.

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And when he opened his hand to show them what it was, it flew out of his hand.

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Now, what he had brought them was a little helicopter, I guess is what you'd call it today.

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But at that point, Orville was only 7 years old at the time, Wilbur was 11.

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That seat of flight was planted, and it never left them.

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They really just started sort of as enthusiasts and hobbyists.

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But when they got started on it, they knew before they did anything, they were going to have to learn everything they could on it.

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In 1896, they decided that they were going to get involved and take an active part in trying to solve this problem of flight.

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Now, they were in their 20s at the time, young men, owned a bicycle shop, the Wright Cycle Company right there in Dayton.

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But what really propelled them was the death of Otto Lilienthal.

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Now, he was a great German glider pilot. He had made thousands of glider flights.

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When the Wrights heard of this, they took a look at this and they said, you know, how is this possible?

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How could he possibly have something go so wrong that it could cause an accident that he could lose his life in?

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And at that moment, they decided that they wanted to maybe get involved to see if they could figure this out.

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At first, they didn't have this idea of they're going to go out and invent an airplane.

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Their initial idea was simply to study the problem, to learn everything about it they could.

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And what their hope was, was to be able to come up with possibly some little tidbit of information

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that they could add to this body of knowledge that man was accumulating.

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And then they figured someday somebody's going to put it together and figure this out.

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The Wright brothers recognized early on that the pilot would have a very limited range of motion in which he could shift his weight.

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They realized that a pilot would become fatigued quickly if he was constantly adjusting his weight to control the craft.

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They understood that movable surfaces would be the only way a plane could be controlled.

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Wilbur Wright came up with the solution quite by accident.

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As he was talking with a customer in the bicycle shop, he was fidgeting with a small cardboard box.

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As he twisted the box back and forth with his fingers, he realized the same principle could be used on an aircraft's wings.

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This idea came to be known as wing warping, allowing the control they'd been looking for.

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They tested the idea on a kite glider and were pleased to see how well it worked.

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With this discovery, the brothers were well on their way to solving the mystery of flight.

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The Wright Cycle Company right there in Dayton was really a key.

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A bicycle at the time, late 1800s, was cutting-edge technology.

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Now, a bicycle is an unstable piece of machinery.

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If you just get on it and sit there, you're going to fall off.

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Now, even if you start riding it, if you want to turn, you can't simply turn that handlebar.

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But if you lean a little into that turn and then turn the handlebar a little, you're making the turn.

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Same thing with an airplane, they figured.

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So control was the key. That's what they were going for.

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In the fall of 1900, the brothers tested their first glider design on the Windy Dunes here at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

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Although the test flights were somewhat successful, the aircraft needed more design modifications.

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For the next three years, the brothers would leave Dayton for a few months out of the year to test their new designs at Kitty Hawk.

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In the late summer of 1902, the brothers finally had a glider that worked well.

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But that was a turning point for the Wrights.

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At that point, they were no longer hobbyists. They were no longer enthusiasts.

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They were now true scientists and engineers.

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They had entered a whole new realm.

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All that was left to do was find an adequate engine and propeller system, and they felt that they would soon be flying.

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Unfortunately, automobile engines of the time were not up to their exacting standards.

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So in typical Wright fashion, they hired their friend Charles Taylor to make an engine especially suited for their needs.

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The engine weighed 180 pounds, and it gave them 12 horsepower.

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That's 50 percent more than they needed, so they had that engine.

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Now, that was a four-cylinder, gasoline-powered, water-cooled engine.

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I mean, it worked great.

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With the engine problem solved, they looked to the propeller.

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For years, the Wright brothers assumed that the propeller would be the easiest problem to solve on the aircraft.

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Their original design was based on a ship's propeller,

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but they ultimately found that this design was not sufficient for their needs.

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The Wrights were the first ones to figure out that a propeller for an aircraft truly needs to be a rotary wing,

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something that can create lift.

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And you just rotate that 90 degrees, you got thrust.

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After months of tackling complex mathematics and theoretical physics, the brothers designed their own propellers.

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Now, they hand-made these propellers out of laminated spruce.

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They put all of this together on the craft,

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and when they were done, they had a unique piece of machinery,

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something that could do what no other machine in the world had ever done before.

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They were confident of that.

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They knew it, but they had yet to prove it.

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After winning a coin toss to decide who would try first,

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Wilbur climbed into the plane December 14, 1903.

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Unfortunately, this first flight attempt failed, causing minor damage to the plane.

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So three days later, after repairs had been made, it was Orville's turn to attempt flight.

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Now, as they were getting ready to launch that craft,

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Orville and Wilbur kind of went to one side and had a little short conversation.

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The witnesses said when they left, they shook hands like two people that may never see each other again.

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Now, they come back, he gets on board that craft, lays down in that pilot position there.

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Now, Wilbur's got to take his place out on the wing.

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They're ready to go.

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Orville releases that wire, and that craft starts down the rail.

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Wilbur's running along, holding on to that wing, keeping up just fine,

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until at 1035 in the morning, 17 December 1903, it lifts into the air.

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And for the first time in the history of the world, we have controlled, powered flight.

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First flight, 12 seconds, only went 120 feet.

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But it was truly the first controlled, powered flight by man.

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Now, they made three more flights that day, a total of four flights, and they alternated.

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Wilbur made the fourth and the longest flight.

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The third flight was only 200 feet, but the fourth flight was 852 feet in 59 seconds.

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That really proved it to the world that they had really done it.

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What have we seen since then?

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I mean, we've got a space station in orbit right now.

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I mean, we put a man on the moon.

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We have literally come from Wilbur's footprints in the sand right here

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to Neil Armstrong's footprints on the moon.

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Now, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, he had with him,

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had it tucked inside his spacesuit, he had a small patch of cloth

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from that original Wright Brothers 1903 powered flyer.

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And I can think of no finer tribute to the Wrights than that.

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That's all from the Wright Memorial. I'm out of here.

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Oh, but before I go, did you know that Orville Wright was not only the first person to fly,

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but he was also involved in the first fatal aircraft accident?

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The first person killed in an airplane accident was Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge.

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On September 17, 1908, airplane inventor Orville Wright took Lieutenant Selfridge up

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on a demonstration flight for the U.S. Army.

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During the flight, one of the propellers separated, causing Wright to lose control.

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The plane fell 75 feet to the ground, killing Lieutenant Selfridge,

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while Orville Wright suffered a broken leg and pelvis.

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Full-scale models of the Wright Flyer have recently been tested in NASA wind tunnels as well.

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Up next, we'll find out how flight has progressed since 1903.

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But first, did you know that the original Wright Flyer was first housed in a British science museum

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from 1928 until 1948?

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The flyer was first offered to the Smithsonian Institute in 1910,

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but Smithsonian officials declined the offer,

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contending that the former Smithsonian director, Samuel Langley,

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had in fact built the first airplane capable of flight.

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Incensed at the obvious slight, Orville Wright assembled the aircraft

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and allowed the Science Museum of London exclusive rights to display it.

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The disagreement between the Smithsonian and Orville was resolved

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after the Smithsonian offered a public apology stating the Wrights were in fact the first to fly.

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The dedication of the Wright Flyer in the Smithsonian Institute took place on December 17, 1948,

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45 years after its first flight.

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After the Wright brothers provided a template for flying machines,

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aeronautical breakthroughs were achieved at a relatively quick pace.

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In fact, only 66 years after the first powered flight,

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the Apollo 11 spacecraft became the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon.

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This and many other amazing achievements were due in large part to the work done by NASA

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and its predecessor, NACA, or the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

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From its humble beginning through today, NASA has truly changed the way we all live.

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By 1915, the United States was already falling behind the Europeans

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in aircraft design and manufacturing.

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To stem this tide, President Woodrow Wilson asked that an aeronautics organization be developed,

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modeled after the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

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With only a $5,000 initial appropriation and 12 unpaid members,

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the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was born.

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Its mission was to supervise and direct the scientific study of flight here in the United States.

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With the first aeronautics lab at Langley Field opening for business in 1917,

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aviation would soon be entering its golden age.

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From 1917 through 1958, NACA was responsible for many pioneering flight achievements in history.

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NACA was involved in virtually every area of flight

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and would soon be known as the foremost aeronautics lab in the world for its pioneering research.

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I had heard about it when I was in college

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because two of my aeronautics professors had worked at Langley

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and they said that they thought all aeronautical engineers ought to work at Langley

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for a couple of years just for that experience.

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Well, I went there for a couple of years and then stayed for 35.

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One of NACA's first major accomplishments came in 1922

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with the construction of the Variable Density Wind Tunnel.

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Before this tunnel was built, researchers could only test aircraft models at sea level,

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which left huge gaps in the understanding of aircraft performance at high altitudes.

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With the new Variable Density Tunnel,

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NACA researchers for the first time could compress air and simulate high-altitude flying.

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This provided accurate data for aircraft manufacturers,

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greatly improving the quality of aircraft being produced.

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The Variable Density Tunnel was just the first of many NACA and NASA wind tunnels to come.

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NACA wind tunnel research helped define and alter many problems

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that early aircraft were experiencing in flight.

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Through the 1920s and 30s, this research helped engineers

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with breakthroughs in cowling research and in new wing designs.

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However, some of the most important work in NACA wind tunnels came at the dawn of World War II.

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Just a few short years before the U.S. entered World War II,

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it was found that many of the aircraft that American pilots were flying

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were slower and less maneuverable than the aircraft that their future enemies were piloting.

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In an effort to find a low-cost way to increase American aircraft performance,

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NACA engineers began evaluating aircraft in drag cleanup experiments.

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By placing an aircraft in a wind tunnel,

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engineers could look at the entire area of the aircraft

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and determine which area could be made aerodynamically smoother.

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This evaluation process greatly improved American aircraft performance.

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During one month alone, July 1944,

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36 U.S. Army and Navy planes were evaluated

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in detailed studies of stability, control, and performance.

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All in all, NACA engineers tested 137 different airplane types

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between 1941 and 1945, either in wind tunnels or in flight.

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A typical performance improvement was seen on the Navy's F-4F aircraft.

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When Langley researchers streamlined the U.S. Navy's Wildcat,

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it was able to fly a full 45 miles per hour faster.

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Improvements like this were seen in virtually every aircraft evaluated,

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undoubtedly saving many lives.

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After the war, a large part of NACA's focus turned to jet-powered aircraft.

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With the success of Chuck Yeager and the X-1,

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America had once again taken the lead in aircraft design.

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In the years to come, NACA researchers would make key aeronautical breakthroughs in quick succession.

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Many believed that the freedom that was given to engineers to explore possibilities

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fueled many of these great breakthroughs.

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I give plenty of credit to Langley because they provided so much for me.

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I could never have done what I did without the Langley Research Center.

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They provided vast amounts of money and equipment,

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personnel that were required to demonstrate these ideas.

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One of the things I mentioned was the fact that when I first had the idea of the area rule,

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having the idea was not, to me as an engineer, as important

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than putting the thing in a wind tunnel and demonstrating that it worked.

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And without NASA, anything that I ever wrote on a damn thing would be in a file somewhere.

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NACA's mission changed on October 1, 1958,

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when it was absorbed into the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA.

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This agency was formed primarily to focus on solving problems related to spaceflight,

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but would also continue to focus on aeronautical problems as well.

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Researchers at NASA have continually been on the forefront of aeronautical exploration.

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In fact, virtually every American aircraft, commercial and military,

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have been tested in some way by NASA researchers.

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This strong history of aeronautical research continues today and will continue in the future.

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Jennifer Pulley spoke with Bob McKinley at NASA Langley Research Center

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to find out what airplanes might look like in the near future.

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Music

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Not long after the first flight at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers,

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and many other inventors for that matter, began trying to find ways to make aircraft better.

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In a relatively short amount of time, aircraft designs went from canvas and wood structures

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with very weak engines to metal structures with very powerful engines.

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With each new innovation, propeller-driven aircraft became stronger, safer, and much more efficient.

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The next great revolution in aircraft design came with the development of the jet engine.

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This type of engine truly changed air travel dramatically.

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It enabled aircraft to fly farther and faster than propeller-driven aircraft,

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while improving safety and efficiency.

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However, since the beginning of the jet age,

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technology innovations in aircraft have been more incremental than revolutionary.

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Small steps forward have continued to make flying safer,

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but what will be the next great revolution in air travel?

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To help answer this question, NASA researchers are working on new designs

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that could change air travel once again.

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New aircraft shapes, cleaner-burning fuels, and new materials

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could be the first steps in the next revolution in aircraft design.

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I spoke with Bob McKinley in the Vehicle Systems Program Office at NASA Langley

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to find out what future aircraft might look like.

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The Vehicle Systems Program Office is focused upon working on improving the aircraft of the future.

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In particular, we want to work on quality of life for the citizens of this country,

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and that's where our investment is aimed,

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and also to make aircraft safer and cleaner and better for the environment.

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Some of the aircraft that we're working on would be subsonic transports like jetliners

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that would fly quieter, land and take off quieter,

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and supersonic aircraft that could fly over land without making a sonic boom,

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and personal air vehicles that you and I could use in place of an automobile.

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Now, will the aircraft of the future look similar to the aircraft we see today?

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Some aircraft will look the same as what we see today or very similar, and some will not.

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One of the concepts that we've been working on in terms of advanced technologies

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is the blended wing body, or the BWB,

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and that aircraft is aimed specifically at being much cleaner

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in terms of emissions and fuel burn.

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Current aircraft are much more efficient and quieter than aircraft designed, say, even 30 years ago,

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but public demand for quieter and more environmentally friendly aircraft continues to grow.

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In an effort to meet this goal, NASA is researching an aircraft called the BWB, or blended wing body.

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The BWB is a hybrid shape that mainly resembles a flying wing,

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but also incorporates some features of a conventional transport aircraft.

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The futuristic airframe is a unique design with efficient high-lift wings and a wide airfoil-shaped body,

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allowing the entire aircraft to generate lift and minimize drag, thereby increasing fuel economy.

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Music

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In addition to the blended wing body, we are working on aircraft that would cruise at a higher speed.

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Today's planes fly between 500 and 600 miles an hour.

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We call it Mach 0.85. It's about the standard.

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And what we'd like to do is move to an aircraft that allows us to fly at Mach 1.6 to 1.8,

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which is over twice as fast, say, 1,200 miles an hour,

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and you'd be able to get from New York to L.A. in about two hours.

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Now, the technology exists to do that today. We have supersonic aircraft.

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We could make aircraft that would efficiently cruise at that speed, and the Concorde is an example.

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Aircraft like that can't fly supersonically over the United States or over any landmass

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because they create a huge sonic boom as they do so.

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A sonic boom is a noise similar to thunder caused by an object moving faster than sound,

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about 750 miles per hour at sea level.

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As an aircraft travels through the atmosphere, it continuously produces air pressure waves,

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similar to the water waves caused by a ship's bow.

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When the aircraft exceeds the speed of sound, these pressure waves combine and form shock waves.

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These shock waves are heard as a sonic boom when they hit the ground.

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This boom is so disturbing that aircraft today generally only break the sound barrier over water

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or in restricted military space.

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But new testing at NASA might soon change that.

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In recent tests, NASA researchers successfully demonstrated a way to lessen the impact of a sonic boom.

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Flight cleared. High altitude supersonic. Entry exit point one. Advice to complete to the corridor.

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They found that by designing the wings and body of an aircraft to a specific shape,

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the pressure waves generated can be kept from merging together.

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The resulting shock waves are therefore much weaker in strength,

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and the sound heard on the ground is less intense.

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With this new breakthrough, supersonic flight over land may finally be within reach.

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Another program that NASA researchers are currently working on

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may completely revolutionize the way we currently commute and travel in our daily lives.

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One of the major breakthroughs for personal travel in the 20th century was the development of the automobile.

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Before the automobile came along, the average person would only travel five miles a day or less.

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This number increased to 50 miles a day with the development of the automobile.

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The goal of the personal air vehicle is to enable the average person to travel about 250 miles a day

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by using their own or a shared personal air vehicle.

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The hope of NASA researchers is that personal air vehicles will be used in the 21st century

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the same way automobiles have been used in the 20th century.

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This change would allow much more mobility and freedom in our everyday lives.

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These aircraft may be able to completely displace the automobile just as automobiles did horses.

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And we're looking at those in three phases.

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The first being what we call a quiet, conventional personal air vehicle.

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It would be very similar to what you see out on general aviation runways today.

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We hope to make these aircraft so easy to use

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that almost anyone would be able to take a few hours of training

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and get in and use this vehicle to get anywhere they want to go.

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The second phase would be what we call a vertical or short takeoff and landing air taxi.

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And this would be an aircraft that could take off in very short distances

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and hold six or eight people and you'd be able to just walk up like you did a taxi at a taxi stand

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and say I need to go from Washington to Cleveland and you'd be in and go.

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The third phase would get into what we call a dual mode.

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And this would be, if you think Jetsons, this is the flying car.

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You'd be able to park this thing in your garage, drive out on your street,

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roll down the street a little ways to some short takeoff field

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and fly and maybe it's as simple as take me to grandma's house and it knows how to get you there.

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You know, we've come a long way since the Wright brothers took their short flight at Kitty Hawk.

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There have been a lot of innovations in aircraft technology

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in just the short amount of time that we've been in the air.

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And NASA's been a big part of that and we're going to continue to be a part of that in the future.

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That's it for this special edition of NASA's Destination Tomorrow.

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Thanks for joining us. I'm Steele McGonigal.

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And I'm Kara O'Brien. For all of us here at NASA, we'll see you next time.

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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology