Human Powered Flight

A new hobby--human-powered flight--is likely to come gliding over the horizon in the years ahead. In 1977, only 74 years after the Wright brothers made the first powered flight, a human-powered airplane flew for 7-1/2 minutes. Its builder, California energy consultant Paul MacCready won the Royal Astronomical Society's 50,000-pound prize for the feat.

Now MacCready is after a new 100,000-pound prize being offered for the first manpowered flight of the English Channel. He has built a new airplane called the Gossamer Albatross with which he intends to win the prize. The Albatross weighs only 60 pounds even though it is 30 feet long, 18 feet high and has a 96-foot wingspan. To make it fly, its pilot must exert about the same foot-pedaling effort as a bicyclist going 20 mph.

The flight across the English Channel is expected to take about two hours. MacCready thinks the biggest problem will be turbulent air created by the 300 ships that travel the English Channel each day. The Albatross will fly only 20 to 40 feet above the water. The pilot will try to avoid flying close to any ship.

MacCready's original manpowered aircraft, the Gossamer Condor, has done better than the Wright's first successful ship "Flyer." Both now reside in the Smithsonian, but the "Flyer" was irreparably damaged after flying only a total of 98 seconds. The only people to fly it, on two flights each, were Orville and Wilbur Wright.

By comparison, the Gossamer Condor has been flown by about 25 people, one of them being a 60-year-old woman. Built only two years later, the Gossamer Albatross is reported to be much easier than the Condor to fly. After the Channel is crossed, the next adventure has to be manpowered flight from Point Barrow to the North Pole!

Or how about to the top of Mt. McKinley?