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.