Space Flight
There may one day be a paper plane launched from space. A prototype passed a durability test in a wind tunnel in March 2008, and Japan's space agency JAXA considered a launch from the International Space Station. However, the plane developers, Takuo Toda (see World Records above) and fellow enthusiast Shinji Suzuki, an aeronautical engineer and professor at Tokyo University, postponed the attempt after acknowledging it would be all but impossible to track them during the planes' week-long journey to Earth, assuming any of them survived the searing descent. The developers were hoping that China or Russia will back further efforts on the project. In February 2011, 200 planes were launched from a net underneath a weather balloon twenty-three miles above Germany. The planes were designed to maintain stable flight even in gusts up to 100 mph. The planes were equipped with memory chips from which data can be uploaded. The planes were found in other places in Europe, North America and even Australia.
Read more about this topic: Paper Plane
Famous quotes containing the words space and/or flight:
“The peculiarity of sculpture is that it creates a three-dimensional object in space. Painting may strive to give on a two-dimensional plane, the illusion of space, but it is space itself as a perceived quantity that becomes the peculiar concern of the sculptor. We may say that for the painter space is a luxury; for the sculptor it is a necessity.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)
“it pleaseth me when I see through the meadows
The tents and pavilions set up, and great joy have I
When I see o’er the campana knights armed and horses arrayed.
And it pleaseth me when the scouts set in flight the folk with
their goods;
And it pleaseth me when I see coming together after them an host of
armed men.”
—Bertrans De Born (fl. 12th century)