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:
“Mere human beings can’t afford to be fanatical about anything.... Not even about justice or loyalty. The fanatic for justice ends by murdering a million helpless people to clear a space for his law-courts. If we are to survive on this planet, there must be compromises.”
—Storm Jameson (1891–1986)
“When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things ...”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)