The Radical Wrights

Yesterday was the 105th anniversary of the Wright brother’s first flight and I thought all evening about their accomplishment.  I dug out my dog-eared copy of Tom Crouch’s excellent biography “The Bishop’s Boys” and read a few paragraphs.  Whenever I can, I visit the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum on the national mall to see the second floor room where the “Flyer” is enshrined.

The Wright brothers are held to be the penultimate real-life historical proof that Horatio Alger was right; hard work, ingenuity, and courage can lead to success, fame, and fortune. 

Or maybe not. 

There were a huge number of people working on the problem of heavier than air flight in the early 20th century.  There are competing claims from supporters of many of those early inventers that some of them “beat” the Wright brothers to achieve the first flight.  None of these claims hold up under scrutiny however.  If the Wright brothers had not existed, or had been happy to be merely bicycle makers, someone else would have flow — the only question is how much later.  Based on my study, it probably would have been quite a lot later.  Literally everybody else was pursuing the dead end of making a perfectly stable aircraft. Today we know that is impossible.  The Wright brothers had a different idea: to build a purposely unstable aircraft with adequate controls to allow a human to manage that instability.  Of course that is not all, but imagine the consequences if the Wright brothers had not pursued their inherently unstable aircraft idea.  What would have happened during WWI with no aircraft?  No Red Baron, no Eddie Rickenbaker, no Hermann Goering, no Billy Mitchell, at least not as we know them today.  Only  tethered balloons for artillery spotters — not much different than the American Civil War — and the Zeppelins.  If the invention of the airplane had been delayed by 20 years, would Charles Lindberg Ameila Earhart be remembered today?  And  would the Japanese Imperial Navy have built aircraft carriers by 1941?  History would have been different in ways that we cannot even imagine.

Yet the Wright brothers succeeded because of a confluence of time, capabilities, and events.  If Octave Chanute had not published his work, if internal combustion engines had not sufficiently developed to generate 12 horsepower from an engine weighing less than 150 pounds,  if Bishop Milton Wright had not bought a 50 cent Penaud helicopter toy to bring home to his sons to play with, if the brothers had given up after the failure of their 1901 kite when Wilbur wrote “Not within a thousand years would man ever fly”, if, if, if, if any of a thousand events had unfolded differently, what would have happened?

The Wright brothers invention succeeded because they were the right people with the right knowledge at the right time in history — and because they worked really hard at making their dream a success.

In retrospect, history looks deterministic.  Everything happened as it was supposed to.  Events unfolded according to some cosmic plan.  In reality, we make our own history.  Decisions every day determine what the future will be.    Edmund Burke’s words ought to ring in our ears:  “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Recently there have been a spate of commentators that have decried our national plan to explore space as unrealistic.  That may be a topic for serious debate.  But one argument that they have advanced is nonsense.  The argument that Apollo was successful and could have only happened because of the historical influences of the times, and since the times and world events are different, the successor to Apollo cannot happen today.

Certainly the times and events influenced Apollo and the moon landings and caused certain decisions to be made in certain ways; events may have moved faster or slower had events been different.  All that I grant you.  But to leap from the historical record to the conclusion that no large national (or international!) exploration of space can take place today because the times are different is unwarranted.

This is a time when there is a confluence of capabilities and events.  All that is required is that innovative people work really hard to achieve their dreams. 

And in that way, these times are no different from 1969 or 1903. 

 

 

 

 

 

Riding the Phugoid

Phugoid, for the non-aviators, refers to a long term longitudinal oscillation in the flight path of a flying machine. More precisely it is the exchange of altitude for airspeed with constant angle of attack.  Whew, I had to look it up in my old textbooks to get it right.  One of the on-line helps says that the engineer that invented the term “phugoid” took it from the Latin but got the translation wrong.  That figures.  Most engineers don’t know that the ancient Romans studied aircraft control.

We studied phugoidal motion a lot when analyzing shuttle re-entry.  It is most pronounced on an abort entry where the shuttle’s forward motion doesn’t create enough lift until the vehicle falls into the denser part of the atmosphere and then there is too much lift so it bounces upward to where there is not enough lift and then it falls down to where the dense air creates too much lift and causes it to climb up to where there isn’t as much air where . . . .   Well, you get the picture.  Not exactly a roller coaster, but somewhat disconcerting. 

If you are designing a re-entry vehicle with any lift at all, studying the aerodynamics so that lift and drag can be applied in the proper way at the proper time is crucial.  During the early portions of the shuttle entry, phugoids are to be avoided since they can lead to high heating which is . . . not a good thing.  Actually, the shuttle flies something called equilibrium glide for most of the entry phase.  This term refers to a state where the lift generated is exactly equal to the orbital mechanics forces and gravity.  In that state, the shuttle flies at a relatively constant altitude for a fairly long period of time, all the while bleeding off the incredible kinetic energy required to orbit the earth.

This is a good time of year to talk about how to fly through life:  are you riding the phugoid or are you in equilibrium glide?  I know where I am.  Yesterday was a real emotional high when the snow dusted my home and the shuttle flew over on its way back to Florida; then there were the stressful lows — like when I tried to untangle the Christmas tree lights . . . .

My job has continued to move away from the purely technical to a place where people skills are increasingly important.  One of my “other duties as assigned” is to represent the agency from time to time with the folks in the media.   The prospect of having this kind of interaction causes a lot of people in NASA to refuse promotions . . . engineering being generally considered to be more important than talking to the public or dealing with the media.

One of the new phenomenon in media is the blossoming of the blogosphere — exactly where we are today.  The neat thing about the internet and blogs is that anyone can spread a lot of knowledge and insight to many folks in a very rapid and inexpensive way.  The sad thing about the internet and blogs is that there is so much misinformation and personal opinion passing for fact out there.  In the last few months I have become much more involved in the new media. 

Some of it makes me miss the old media.  It is sad to see reputable old style news organizations in financial trouble laying off experienced and professional journalists, for example.  And being over the age of . . .. (ahem) 30 . . . I still prefer the feel of a real newspaper in my hands toreading streaming news off a computer screen.  But, OK, things change and we all have to learn to use the new tools.

My biggest problem with blogs and the internet — and I’m far from being the first to observe this — is the continual flame wars that go on.  Seems like everything posted attracts someone with a contrary view — that’s OK, in fact, that’s a good thing — but too frequently a contrary view stated in the most vituperative and inflammatory way.   A good exchange of views can be enlightening.  A rude exchange of person insults is just depressing.  Sigh.  Makes me want to repeat the old SNL line:  “can’t we just all get along?”  

To participate in this new world of internet interaction, you have to develop a thick skin.  Recognize the valuable components of a enthusiastic exchange of ideas and ignore the ad hominem and personal attacks and general lack of civility that seems to be rampant on the web these days. 

Its hard to avoid riding the phugoid between the highs that happen because of a great and productive exchange of ideas and information, and the lows that come with depressing and inappropriate personal attacks.

So my aerospace analogy, at least for the holiday season, is to avoid the phugoid and try to stay on the equilibrium glide as long as you have the energy. 

Hey, that probably applies to family get togethers for the holidays, too!  Don’t sweat the small stuff.