Kremer Speed Prize and Later Flights By MIT Team
A week after the cross-channel flight of Gossamer Albatross, which used a propeller designed by the MIT team, a student-led team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved first flight on their Chrysalis aircraft, which demonstrated full controllability and went on to be flown by 44 different pilots, including the first flights by female pilots.
The third Kremer prize of £20,000 for speed went on 1 May 1984 to the MIT design team for flying their Monarch-B craft on a triangular 1.5 km course in under three minutes (for an average speed of 32 km/h): pilot Frank Scarabino. Further prizes of £5,000 are awarded to each subsequent entrant improving the speed by at least five percent.
Over the next four years, the MIT group continued to evolve their designs, with the Monarch and Monarch-B aircraft succeeded by three follow-on designs, the Light Eagle and two MIT Daedalus aircraft, the Daedalus-87 and Daedalus-88. The current distance record recognised by the FAI was achieved on 23 April 1988 from Iraklion on Crete to Santorini in the MIT Daedalus 88 piloted by Kanellos Kanellopoulos: a straight distance of 115.11 km (71.53 mi).
Read more about this topic: Human-powered Aircraft
Famous quotes containing the words speed, prize, flights, mit and/or team:
“The correct rate of speed in innovating changes in long-standing social customs has not yet been determined by even the most expert of the experts. Personally I am beginning to think there is more danger in lagging than in speeding up cultural change to keep pace with mechanical change.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“What we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“This summertime must be forgot
MIt will be, if we would or not....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Romeo. I dreamt a dream tonight.
Mercutio. And so did I.
Romeo. Well, what was yours?
Mercutio. That dreamers often lie.
Romeo. In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
Mercutio. O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomi
Over men’s noses as they lie asleep.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)