NASA celebrates the 120th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight
Link here. The NASA article does a thorough job of not only describing that first powered flight from Kitty Hawk, it shows how that success is linked to the establishment first of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), which after Sputnik became NASA.
NASA in turn has repeatedly honored the Wright Brothers and their work on subsequent space missions.
Pieces of the Wright Flyer, sometimes called Kitty Hawk, have flown in space, carried there by astronauts with a geographic connection and a sense of history. In 1969, under a special arrangement with the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, like the Wright brothers a native of Ohio, took with him a piece of wood from the Wright Flyer’s left propeller and a piece of muslin fabric (8 by 13 inches) from its upper left wing. The items, stowed in his Lunar Module Eagle personal preference kit, landed with him and fellow astronaut Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin at Tranquility Base, and returned to Earth with third crew member Michael Collins in the Command Module Columbia. Visitors can view these items near the Wright Flyer at the NASM.
In 1986, North Carolina native NASA astronaut Michael J. Smith arranged with the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh to take a piece of wood and a swatch of fabric salvaged, and authenticated by Orville Wright, from the damaged Wright Flyer aboard space shuttle Challenger’s STS-51L mission. Although Challenger and its crew perished in the tragic accident, divers recovered the artifacts from the wreckage and visitors can view them at the North Carolina Museum of History.
…A piece of the Wright Flyer has even traveled beyond the Earth-Moon system. When the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover landed in Mars’ Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, it carried underneath it a four-pound autonomous helicopter named Ingenuity. Engineers attached a small piece of cloth the size of a postage stamp from the Wright Flyer’s wing to a cable underneath the helicopter’s solar panel. On April 19, 2021, when Ingenuity lifted off to a height of 10 feet, it marked the first powered aircraft flight on a world other than Earth. Ingenuity’s first flight lasted 39 seconds in an area NASA named Wright Brothers Field. The United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization gave the field the airport code of JZRO – for Jezero Crater – and the helicopter type designator IGY, with the call-sign INGENUITY.
There is one major difference between NASA and the Wright Brothers. The latter worked independently with private funds given voluntarily. The former has always been a governent operation, funded by coerced taxes. The consequences of this difference are so profound many have written books describing them.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Link here. The NASA article does a thorough job of not only describing that first powered flight from Kitty Hawk, it shows how that success is linked to the establishment first of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), which after Sputnik became NASA.
NASA in turn has repeatedly honored the Wright Brothers and their work on subsequent space missions.
Pieces of the Wright Flyer, sometimes called Kitty Hawk, have flown in space, carried there by astronauts with a geographic connection and a sense of history. In 1969, under a special arrangement with the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, like the Wright brothers a native of Ohio, took with him a piece of wood from the Wright Flyer’s left propeller and a piece of muslin fabric (8 by 13 inches) from its upper left wing. The items, stowed in his Lunar Module Eagle personal preference kit, landed with him and fellow astronaut Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin at Tranquility Base, and returned to Earth with third crew member Michael Collins in the Command Module Columbia. Visitors can view these items near the Wright Flyer at the NASM.
In 1986, North Carolina native NASA astronaut Michael J. Smith arranged with the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh to take a piece of wood and a swatch of fabric salvaged, and authenticated by Orville Wright, from the damaged Wright Flyer aboard space shuttle Challenger’s STS-51L mission. Although Challenger and its crew perished in the tragic accident, divers recovered the artifacts from the wreckage and visitors can view them at the North Carolina Museum of History.
…A piece of the Wright Flyer has even traveled beyond the Earth-Moon system. When the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover landed in Mars’ Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, it carried underneath it a four-pound autonomous helicopter named Ingenuity. Engineers attached a small piece of cloth the size of a postage stamp from the Wright Flyer’s wing to a cable underneath the helicopter’s solar panel. On April 19, 2021, when Ingenuity lifted off to a height of 10 feet, it marked the first powered aircraft flight on a world other than Earth. Ingenuity’s first flight lasted 39 seconds in an area NASA named Wright Brothers Field. The United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization gave the field the airport code of JZRO – for Jezero Crater – and the helicopter type designator IGY, with the call-sign INGENUITY.
There is one major difference between NASA and the Wright Brothers. The latter worked independently with private funds given voluntarily. The former has always been a governent operation, funded by coerced taxes. The consequences of this difference are so profound many have written books describing them.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
One of my most prized possessions is the bound two-volume set of the Wright Brothers’ papers. Nothing continues to impress me like their amazing scientific prowess attained in the absence of any formal education post high-school. The laconic description of their demonstration of flight prowess to the self-declared “leaders” in the subject in Le Mans, France is worth the purchase price alone.
When I was at the site in Kitty Hawk, I was amazed by how short that first flight actually was (it’s marked out on the ground). They said that the flight would fit INSIDE a 747!
And they didn’t lose Wilbur’s luggage! :)
I r3ecently read ” First to Fly” by James Tobin. Recommended.
Sadly–no relation… adopted anyway
I found my visit to Kitty Hawk, moving. The Wrights were the first aeronautical engineers, in that they systematically evaluated the problem of heavier-than-air, controlled, powered, flight. Others, notably Lillenthal, broke ground, but everything we have that isn’t a balloon, comes from them.
I maintain that bicycles should fly free on 17 December. At one time, bicycles were regular companions on my flights, but letters to airlines have not yielded results.
I remember, as a youngster, reading Ray Bradbury’s short story Icarus Montgolfier Wright, and it seems just as apropos today.
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/bradburys-short-stories/summary-and-analysis-medicine-for-melancholy/icarus-montgolfier-wright
The amazing thing, after living through the First Space Age and now well into the Second, is that so many of the visions of the 1950s seem to be on the verge of finally coming to pass, albeit after a much longer pause than most people might have imagined.
Godspeed, Mr. Bradbury, and all of the other visionaries who dared to dream of such achievements. And Godspeed, as well, to all of those people who are still making them happen today.