Aeronautical Engineering

Aeronautical engineering, the study of flight and how to successfully build flying machines. People have been intrigued by flight for thousands of years, recorded as early as 400 BC China, when small children would play with wooden toys reminiscent of helicopters.¹ These toys used by the early Chinese would later lead to incredible discoveries in aeronautical engineering, starting with one of the most influential aircraft designers, Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci is widely known for his accomplishments in art history. His paintings “The Last Supper”, “Vitruvian Man” and “The Mona Lisa” are some of the most recognized pieces in the art world today.² But if one were to look deep into one of da Vinci’s note books, they would see that he had another passion than just art: Flight. His love of flight took shape when he designed the “Ornithopter” a flying machine based off of the build of pigeons and bats, and the “Arial Screw” a.k.a. the first ever helicopter. Whether he actually built these items or not is a mystery, but his designs were the jumping off points for aeronautics. ³

Several years passed before the next big step was made in aeronautical engineering. Several people successfully build smaller machines such as Sir George Cayl’s hang glider and Marquis de Bacqueville’s flapping wings, but other than that no large leaps were made until 1903 when Wilbur and Orville Wright, (the Wright Brothers) tested the first successful bi-plane which flew for 59 seconds, covering 852 feet. This flight was the first successful sustained flight in the world.⁴

Since these times, the biggest moments in flight history haven’t been the actual aircrafts invented necessarily, but the people who flew them. In May of 1927, Charles Lindbergh won the Orteig Prize, for his solo non-stop flight from Long Island to Paris.⁵ After that, Amelia Earhart attempted to be the first female to make a non-stop solo flight across the pacific ocean, but unfortunately didn’t make it, but she is still considered, (in my opinion at least) to be a highly influential figure for both people in aerospace, and women.

Aeronautical engineering has made great leaps since its early days, going from wooden gliders to large metal aircrafts. So one of the questions that people often ask is how is it that something so heavy and blocky looking fly whereas a human being can’t? There are several factors that allow an airplane to fly, and keep a human on the ground.

One of the biggest reasons that a plane can fly and a person can’t is because of wingspan. In order to create a successful hang glider, where there isn’t a motor or anything to create extra force, the wingspan has to be more than the weight of the plane.⁶ What I mean by this is that if the weight of the plane is one pound, the wing area has to be over one foot. It is rather obvious that a human does not meet this requirement, considering that our arms aren’t each fifteen feet long and ten feet wide.

The second factor is force. The reason why an airplane can reach certain heights whereas a hang glider just glides is because the aircraft has extra force pushing it upward, i.e. an engine. In the situation that the wing area isn’t quite enough to hold the plane, or that it just matches the weight of the plane, an engine can be installed to help the plane reach its full potential. Another reason why a hang glider just glides rather flies is that one has to consider how the weight changes when someone is riding on the glider, versus not having anyone on the glider. Without anyone on it, the glider has the potential to lift off like a kite, whereas having a person riding on it keeps it weighted to the ground.

One of the final factors is the center of gravity. Typically, in an airplane, the center of gravity can be found around the cockpit of the plane. What keeps it from tipping over however is something called a moment. A moment is a secondary large amount of weight that is placed in the plane to keep it level, in most instances the moment can be found near the tail-end of the plane. A human, on the other hand, carries their center of gravity around their waist or stomach, and the “moment” in this situation would probably be the head. Since the moment is pushing straight down on the center of gravity, it makes it very difficult, (or impossible) to achieve lift.⁷

All of the reasons factor into the reason why aircrafts are able to achieve flight and a human being cannot. But despite lacking the ability to fly on our own, great inventors such as da Vinci and the Wright brothers still dreamt of seeing humans fly one day, so they created the machines that could fly for us. There will almost undoubtedly never be a day where a person can take flight all on their own, but now that we have these amazing resources created by the thousands of underappreciated people we call engineers, we don’t have to.

¹Frederick Lach, Donald. Asia in the Making of Europe, Volume II: A Century of Wonder. 2 vols.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

²"10 Most Famous Paintings of all Time." touropia. http://www.touropia.com/, 02/03/2011. Web.

29 April 2011. <http://www.touropia.com/most-famous-paintings/>.

³"Leonardo da Vinci." flyingmachines. http://www.flyingmachines.org/, 2003. Web. 29 April 2011.

<http://www.flyingmachines.org/davi.html>.

⁴"Milestones of Flight: 1903 Wright Flyer." nasm. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum,

Web. 30 April 2011. <http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gal100/wright1903.html>.

⁵ "Charles Lindbergh, An American Aviator." Charles Lindbergh, An American Aviator.

CharlesLindbergh.com, Web. 20 April 2011. <http://www.charleslindbergh.com/plane/firstplane.asp>.

⁶ Johnson, Paul. "Calculating the Wing Area for Constant Chord, Tapered and Delta Wings."

Airfield Models--Formulas, Straight and Tapered Wing Area. Airfield Models, 2003. Web. 25 April 2011. <http://www.airfieldmodels.com/information_source/math_and_science_of_model_aircraft/formulas/straight_tapered_and_delta_wing_area.htm>.

⁷ Benson, Tom. "Center of Gravity-cg, Aircraft Application." national aeronautics and space

administration. NASA, 11 Jul 2008. Web. 22 April 2011. http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/acg.html.

Honors Engineering: Week Fourteen

For my final blog post, I decided to take a look back at all of my previous posts and just list our some of the information I found over the weeks.


Important people in aeronautical history:

• Leonardo da Vinci: Invented the first real flying machine and helicopter.
• Marquis de Bacqueville: Created imitation flapping wings and flew from his house to the Garden of Tuileries.
• Sir George Cayley: Built a glider and skimmed the ground and sailed from hilltops.
• The Wright Brothers: First successful flight of an airplane with an on board motor.
• Paul Cornu: Created first successful helicopter.
• Charles Lindbergh: First person to make a non-stop flight across the Atlantic ocean while flying solo.
• Amelia Earhart: First woman to attempt to make a non-stop flight across the Atlantic ocean while flying solo.

Big moments in flight history:

• 1500: Leonardo da Vinci sketched (and built?) a parachute, ornithopter (flying machine) and helicopter.
• 1742: Marquis de Bacqueville created imitation flapping wings and flew from his house, (on the Seine) to the Garden of Tuileries. The wings ceased to act mid-flight, ending in apparent disaster.
• 1890: Sir George Cayley built a glider with a 300 foot wing surface and skimmed the ground and sailed from hilltops.
• 1842: Henson patented a monoplane to be driven by a steam engine. Wing span was 140 feet.
• 1900: Wilbur and Orville Wright begin experimenting with glider with a front rudder. The glider hovered for just over a minute.
• 1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright tested a biplane glider which flew for 59 seconds, covering 852 feet. The plane weighed 750 pounds, first successful sustained flight in the world.

Important aspects in flight:

• Balance
• Gravity
• Acceleration
• Weight Displacement
• Force

Different types of air crafts:

• Fighter-planes
• Non-fighter planes
• Transport planes
• Helicopters

Honors Engineering: Week Thirteen

This week I decided to continue on my talk of helicopters from last week. I thought that I would go a bit more in depth as to the history of the helicopter.

I mentioned previously that Leonardo da Vinci was the first noted inventor of the helicopter. As it turns out, that information isn't entirely accurate. The helicopter can be traced back as far as 400 BC. In China, children would play with small bamboo toys very reminiscent to da Vinci's first helicopter design(s).

After da Vinci, the helicopter went through several revisions. One well known contributor to the helicopter was Thomas Edison. He attempted putting an internal combustion engine into the machine, but unfortunately the air craft exploded. The internal combustion engine was redesigned later by Ján Bahýľ.

The first successful flight of a helicopter was conducted by Paul Cornu on 13 November 1907. The contraption lifted up 1 foot. There had been one flight previously which lifted up 2 feet, but it was so unsteady it could not be counted as "successful".

Honors Engineering: Week Twelve

This week I decided to look into Helicopters. Helicopters are interesting because in many ways they are much more difficult to fly and build compared to an airplane.

The helicopter was initially imagined by Leonardo da Vinci. He based its design off of that of a screw. A screw has threads on it that continue to descend at a constant rate. He decided to take that idea and applied it to a flying machine. The threads on the screw became the propeller of the helicopter, since air would continue to circulate around the propeller at a constant rate, allowing it to remain airborne. It is not certain that this design worked, or was even built, but it is rumored that da Vinci did in fact build the machine, and that it hovered successfully.

The helicopter has been designed and redesigned several times now, but it still a tricky machine to opperate. The helicopter depends less on thrust and gravity, and more on balance. Considering the somewhat awkward shape of the helicopter, it is easy to understand why balancing an object such as itself would be a difficult task to complete successfully. It is very front heavy and has a long tail sticking out at the back.

The helicopter depends very heavily on the gyroscope. The gyroscope was initially thought of in 1817 by Johann Bohnenberger, and was later redesigned by Walter R. Johnson. The gyroscope is basically an internal compass or a guidance system. It assists in balance and guidence, which is why it helps the helicopter so greatly.

Honors Engineering: Week Eleven

This week I decided to talk a bit about my 24 Hour Engineer. My friend Eric Harmatz is an aerospace engineering major at Embry-Riddle University in Florida. He used to go to High Tech High Media Arts with me and graduated last year, (2010).

Throughout the entire time I have known Eric, he has been in love with airplanes. He would try to adjust as many of his class projects and assignments in order to make them about airplanes or flying. A few years ago in engineering class, he created a miniature helicopter with an on-board computer. This may sound easy enough, but getting this to balance without the help of a remote control proved to be an incredibly difficult task.

Already, Eric has started working in project groups at college designing small air crafts. Eric has always been a fan of flying because his grandfather was a pilot, (as were both of mine, so I can understand his fascination with air crafts). He started working on his pilots license while in high school and should be receiving his official license this May.

Honors Engineering: Week Ten

This week I decided to look into gravity. Gravity is one of those things that we all know about, and usually have a basic understanding of, but I wanted to know a bit more about it.

Gravity is basically a force that keeps you weighted down so you don't float off into space. However, if gravity is too dense, it can actually crush you, (the proof is when people get older and their bones start getting more and more brittle, gravity is actually part of the reason why they start to slouch and "shrink"). How this relates to airplanes is based on where an airplane climbs to.

As we all know, airplanes go several thousand feet into the air before reaching "cruising speed". The reason for this is partially because of gravity density. While the plane isn't so high up people start floating around, it is high enough that it can comfortably move without the constant pressure pushing down on the plane.

A well known myth relating to gravity is that the moon is zero-gravity. This is absolutely not true. The moon has very low gravity, far lower than what we have here on earth, but it does have enough gravity that when astronauts and spaceships land on the moon, they don't immediately go floating off. (This is also why the tape of Neil Armstrong dropping something once he steps on the moon does not prove the the moon landing "wasn't real").

Honors Engineering: Week Nine

I was out of town this week, so I wasn't able to do as much research as normal. While I was out of town though, I went to a museum where there was a large display of paper. This reminded me of paper airplanes, which made me think of aerodynamics. I know a lot about how aerodynamics work, but I have heard that aerodynamics don't apply to things under a certain size, so I decided to find out what size that was.

I found out that all things are affected by aerodynamics, but their ability to fly based on that is greater the larger the object is. So, if you threw a paper airplane and a paper-ball made out of same size paper, aerodynamics will obviously favor the plane because there is less area for wind to resist against. However, the difference in distance might only be a few feet. If you have a ball the size of an actual airplane though, most likely it wouldn't even be able to get off of the ground because the level of resistance would be too great.

Honors Engineering: Week Eight

This week I decided to do a bit of research on flight navigation. My grandfather on my dad's side was a flight navigator for the military during World War Two, so I am rather interested in flight navigation.

I realized that flight navigation and regular navigation, (road maps etc.) are rather different. Flight navigation is measured in nautical miles, rather that traditional miles. Nautical miles are miles that follow the curve of the earth, whereas the miles we are used to just follow a straight line. Considering that most airplanes travel either between states, countries, or at least across the state, there is naturally going to be a noticeable curve between the start of the flight and the destination.

If you are in a car, you are so close to the ground that the curve of the earth barely matters. However, if you  are in an airplane which goes thousands of feet in the air, you have to take the curve of the earth into account or else you could land miles away from your actual destination. Also, flight navigators have to find locations based on longitude and latitude.

Honors Engineering: Week Seven

This week I decided to look into Military based-planes. I wanted to see what the real differences between military planes and commercial planes were, if any, (other than the inside seating etc). I ended up discovering there are definite differences. I also discovered that "military airplanes" go far beyond just a singular definition. So I am going to break it down by sections a bit.

Fighter planes: There are several different forms of fighter planes, some of the most famous being attack air crafts, bombers, and fighters. Attack air crafts are used primarily by the Navy and the Marines. They are only somewhat considered to be a fighter plane because their air-air combat skills aren't very good. Bombers are typically heavier than attack air crafts. They are typically used, (obviously) for bombing the ground. Fighters are used specifically for destroying other planes and ground targets.

Non-Fighter planes: Reconnaissance air crafts, logistics air crafts, helicopters and experimental air crafts are all examples of non-fighter planes. Reconnaissance planes are used mainly for intelligence purposes. The detect submarines and other objects through radar. Logistics planes are used in order to transport people and supplies, helicopters serve a similar purpose except they also perform search and rescue. Lastly, experimental planes are used for testing purposes, both testing new technology as well as "testing the waters" for lack of better words.

There are also multi-purpose planes which can be used for transportation, fighting and other things.

Honors Engineering: Week Six

Today, I decided to do a bit of research on more recent events in flight history. So far, I have only really focused on influential people in flight history, and most of them were from nearly a century ago, so I feel that it is time that I do a bit more current research. I found a short timeline of some current events in flight.

One of the biggest current events actually has to do more with aerospace engineering since it has to do with space shuttles. Unfortunately, the space shuttle launches have come to a close due to lack of proper funding, so unfortunately, we won't be seeing any more rockets going up any time soon. The rocket launches aren't exactly the same as airplanes, but they are still connected.

John F. Kennedy was in office when the launch program started. It was his and the rest of America's vision to have man walk on the moon, which we successfully completed in the mid-sixties. Before that, we had already launched several items into space, (more specifically, Russia had sent several objects into space, but none the less it was a step forward for earth in general).

But now, after fifty long years of moon landings, the program is coming to a close. Fifty years, in my opinion at least, doesn't seem so long anymore since this program still seems relatively new, but this is what is new, (or at least heavily talked about) the world of aerospace engineering.

Honors Engineering: Week Five

This week I looked up Amelia Earhart. Amelia Earhart, while not necessarily successful in flying solo across the Atlantic ocean, is still none-the-less a highly influential member of aviation history. On top of that, she was also a great role model for women. She showed that women could not only be pilots, but enter an engineering based field.

Amelia Earhart was the first woman to attempt flying solo across the Atlantic ocean. Many know the supposed story of how she didn't make it all the way across the ocean, crashing either somewhere in the ocean or on an island. But going beyond that, the fact that a woman would attempt a flight that so few before her had successfully completed, (Charles Lindbergh being one of them) was a huge step in the right direction for not only pilots, but aeronautical engineers and women in engineering.

Earhart had actually made it across the Atlantic previously, she just wasn't flying solo. So already she had completed a rather daunting task. But what the most inspiring part of Amelia Earhart is, (for me at least) is that she gave women the opportunity to shine in a predominantly male field. Earhart gave women the opportunity to become pilots, and engineers. While she might not have been an engineer herself, she definitely knew about planes, and I have to believe that she had some idea how they were put together. She was truly Rosie the Riveter.

Honors Engineering: Week Four

This week I decided to focus on Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh is, (not only on the side of the San Diego airport) but also a majorly influential person when it comes to flight. On top of that, my dad has actually flown with him, so he is of even more interest to me personally.

Both of these people are known for very similar reasons. Charles Lindbergh was the first person to make a non-stop flight across the Atlantic ocean while flying solo. This flight is part of the reason why we are now able to fly regularly into different countries rather than having to take ships everywhere. This task was incredibly dangerous due to the fact that, for one, nobody had ever done it before him, as well as the fact that nobody could be a thousand percent sure that he had all of the supplies he needed, (as in the case of Amelia Earhart).

While this wasn't the only flight by Lindbergh by any means, it was his most important. Charles Lindbergh had several successful flights, especially while he was a pilot for the military, (another reason why successfully completing a transatlantic flight was so important). But without that one flight, people (probably) wouldn't be able to travel internationally by means of airplanes, military planes would probably have to be built within the country they were to be used in, or they just couldn't leave their own country etc. It's interesting how something as common as flying could be such a dangerous task less than a century ago.

Honors Engineering: Week Three

So this week I decided to do a bit of research on important moments in flight history. I have come up with a list of different events that have been critical to modern flight. I have found several interesting sources, but I decided to write down a few in particular:

1. 1500: Leonardo da Vinci sketched (and built?) a parachute, ornithopter (flying machine) and helicopter
2. 1742: Marquis de Bacqueville created imitation flapping wings and flew from his house, (on the Seine) to the Garden of Tuileries. The wings ceased to act mid-flight, ending in apparent disaster.
3. 1890: Sir George Cayley built a glider with a 300 foot wing surface and skimmed the ground and sailed from hilltops
4. 1842: Henson patented a monoplane to be driven by a steam engine. Wing span was 140 feet
5. 1900: Wilbur and Orville Wright begin experimenting with glider with a front rudder. The glider hovered for just over a minute
6. 1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright tested a biplane glider which flew for 59 seconds, covering 852 feet. The plane weighed 750 pounds, first successful sustained flight in the world

These were just the moments in history that really struck me, plus several of these events correlated with research I had completed recently.

Click here to see a complete list of important moments throughout flight history.

Honors Engineering: Week Two

This week I decided to look up the Wright Brothers. The Wright Brothers were not the first people to attempt building an airplane, in fact hang-gliding had been around for years already. Their first flight wasn't even all that impressive, with the airplane only going about twelve feet high and roughly 100 feet forward. The reason why the Wright Brothers were so critical to the history of aeronautical and aerospace engineering is because they were the first people to successfully build a functioning aircraft with a motor. Until this point, all aircrafts were either made powered, wind powered or something of the like. So the fact that a plane could suddenly operate with electronics rather than natural elements opened the doors to all new discoveries.

It wasn't until the Wright brother's second flight that things really got interesting. During the second flight, after some initial problems were fixed and the weather was better, (it was dumping rain during their first flight) the plane ended up going over 100 feet in the air.So while the Wright Brothers might not have been the true fathers of flight, they did understand modern technology better than most, and they gave us the steps we needed to get to where we are now in the aerospace world.

Honors Engineering: Week One

This week for my honors project, I have started doing some research on some of the "Founders of Flight". I started with da Vinci. I have done research on da Vinci previously for my senior project last semester, but I feel that he is a good starting off point since he really was one of the first few people to really experiment with flying machines.

Da Vinci created multiple flying machines, but his two most famous machines were called the "Ornithopter" which was a human powered aircraft that flapped its wings like a bird. Da Vinci created this design after dissecting several doves and pigeons. His second most famous design was the "helicopter". Da Vinci was inspired to create the helicopter after looking at a screw for several hours. He realized that if the air is able to spiral around the screw consistently, then if the screw is spinning, it should be able to hover mid-air. He decided to design the helicopter off of this design, which eventually turned into the helicopter we have today.