Ascension is a Canadian/American science fiction mystery drama television miniseries From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .. Brian Van Holt described his character as "a man caught in the middle, aware that his legacy as the.
Table of contents
- Early flying machines
- The Unseen
- Not Merely the Finest TV Documentary Series Ever Made - Issue 7: Waste - Nautilus
It has been claimed [44] that these sketches show that Cayley modeled the principles of a lift-generating inclined plane as early as or In Cayley made a model helicopter of the form commonly known as a Chinese flying top, unaware of Launoy and Bienvenu's model of similar design. He regarded the helicopter as the best design for simple vertical flight, and later in his life in he made an improved model. He gave a Mr. Cooper credit for being the first person to improve on "the clumsy structure of the toy" and reports Cooper's model as ascending twenty or thirty feet.
Cayley made one and a Mr. Coulson made a copy, described by Cayley as "a very beautiful specimen of the screw propellor in the air" and capable of flying over ninety feet high. Cayley's next innovations were twofold: He initially used a simple flat plane fixed to the arm and inclined at an angle to the airflow. In , he set down the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. The design is not yet wholly modern, incorporating as it does two pilot-operated paddles or oars which appear to work as flap valves.
He continued his researches and in constructed a model glider which was the first modern heavier-than-air flying machine, having the layout of a conventional modern aircraft with an inclined wing towards the front and adjustable tail at the back with both tailplane and fin. The wing was just a toy paper kite, flat and uncambered. A movable weight allowed adjustment of the model's centre of gravity. By the end of , he had constructed the world's first full-size glider and flown it as an unmanned tethered kite.
In the same year, goaded by the farcical antics of his contemporaries see above , he began the publication of a landmark three-part treatise titled "On Aerial Navigation" — He identified the four vector forces that influence an aircraft: He argued that manpower alone was insufficient, and while no suitable power source was yet available he discussed the possibilities and even described the operating principle of the internal combustion engine using a gas and air mixture. He also identified and described the importance of the cambered aerofoil , dihedral , diagonal bracing and drag reduction, and contributed to the understanding and design of ornithopters and parachutes.
In , he had progressed far enough to construct a glider in the form of a triplane large and safe enough to carry a child. A local boy was chosen but his name is not known. He went on to publish the design for a full-size manned glider or "governable parachute" to be launched from a balloon in and then to construct a version capable of launching from the top of a hill, which carried the first adult aviator across Brompton Dale in The identity of the aviator is not known.
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It has been suggested variously as Cayley's coachman, [57] footman or butler, John Appleby who may have been the coachman [55] or another employee, or even Cayley's grandson George John Cayley. Minor inventions included the rubber-powered motor [ citation needed ] , which provided a reliable power source for research models. By , he had even re-invented the wheel, devising the tension-spoked wheel in which all compression loads are carried by the rim, allowing a lightweight undercarriage. Drawing directly from Cayley's work, Henson 's design for an aerial steam carriage broke new ground.
Although only a design, scale models were built in [59] or [60] and flew 10 or feet it was the first in history for a propeller-driven fixed-wing aircraft. In , Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Bris made the first flight higher than his point of departure, by having his glider "L'Albatros artificiel" pulled by a horse on a beach. He reportedly achieved a height of meters, over a distance of meters.
The British advances had galvanised French researchers. One of them was able to fly, first using a clockwork mechanism as an engine, and then using a miniature steam engine. The two brothers managed to make the models take off under their own power, fly a short distance and land safely [65] [66] [67] [68] [59]. He took Cayley's work on cambered wings further, making important findings about both the wing aerofoil section and lift distribution.
To test his ideas, from he constructed several gliders, both manned and unmanned, and with up to five stacked wings. He concluded correctly that long, thin wings would be better than the bat-like ones suggested by many, because they would have more leading edge for their area. Today this relationship is known as the aspect ratio of a wing. The latter part of the 19th century became a period of intense study, characterized by the " gentleman scientists " who represented most research efforts until the 20th century.
He was the first to patent an aileron control system in In Wenham and Browning made the first wind tunnel. This clearly demonstrated the possibility of building practical heavier-than-air flying machines: He advanced the theory of wing contours and aerodynamics and constructed successful models of aeroplanes, helicopters and ornithopters. The planophore also had longitudinal stability, being trimmed such that the tailplane was set at a smaller angle of incidence than the wings, an original and important contribution to the theory of aeronautics.
By the s, lightweight steam engines had been developed enough for their experimental use in aircraft. Several trials were made with the aircraft, and it achieved lift-off under its own power after launching from a ramp, glided for a short time and returned safely to the ground, making it the first successful powered hop in history, a year ahead of Moy's flight. A tailless monoplane with a single vertical fin and twin tractor airscrews, it also featured hinged rear elevator and rudder surfaces, retractable undercarriage and a fully enclosed, instrumented cockpit.
It was powered by compressed air, with the air tank forming the fuselage. In Russia Alexander Mozhaiski constructed a steam-powered monoplane driven by one large tractor and two smaller pusher propellers. He chose to largely ignore his contemporaries and built his own whirling arm rig and wind tunnel. In he built a hangar and workshop in the grounds of Baldwyn's Manor at Bexley , Kent , and made many experiments. He developed a biplane design which he patented in and completed as a test rig three years later.
Later modifications would add more wing surfaces as shown in the illustration. However his similar but larger Avion III of , notable only for having twin steam engines, failed to fly at all: The glider constructed with the help of Massia and flown briefly by Biot in was based on the work of Mouillard and was still bird-like in form. It is preserved the Musee de l'Air , France, and is claimed to be the earliest man-carrying flying machine still in existence.
In the last decade or so of the 19th century a number of key figures were refining and defining the modern aeroplane. The Englishman Horatio Phillips made key contributions to aerodynamics. Lillienthal published a book on bird flight and went on, from to , to construct a series of gliders, of various monoplane, biplane and triplane configurations, to test his theories.
He made thousands of flights and at the time of his death was working on motor-powered gliders. Phillips conducted extensive wind tunnel research on aerofoil sections, using steam as the working fluid. He proved the principles of aerodynamic lift foreseen by Cayley and Wenham and, from , took out several patents on aerofoils. His findings underpin all modern aerofoil design. Phillips would later develop theories on the design of multiplanes , which he went on to show were unfounded. Starting in the s, advances were made in construction that led to the first truly practical gliders.
Four people in particular were active: One of the first modern gliders was built by John J. Montgomery in ; Montgomery later claimed to have made a single successful flight with it in near San Diego [84] and Montgomery's activities were documented by Chanute in his book Progress in Flying Machines. Short hops with Montgomery's second and third gliders in and were also described by Montgomery.
Another hang-glider had been constructed by Wilhelm Kress as early as near Vienna. He duplicated Wenham's work and greatly expanded on it in , publishing his research in as Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst. He also produced a series of gliders of a type now known as the hang glider , including bat-wing, monoplane and biplane forms, such as the Derwitzer Glider and Normal soaring apparatus. Starting in he became the first person to make controlled untethered glides routinely, and the first to be photographed flying a heavier-than-air machine, stimulating interest around the world.
He rigorously documented his work, including photographs, and for this reason is one of the best known of the early pioneers. He also promoted the idea of "jumping before you fly", suggesting that researchers should start with gliders and work their way up, instead of simply designing a powered machine on paper and hoping it would work. Lilienthal made over 2, glides until his death in from injuries sustained in a glider crash.
Lilienthal had also been working on small engines suitable for powering his designs at the time of his death. Picking up where Lilienthal left off, Octave Chanute took up aircraft design after an early retirement, and funded the development of several gliders. In the summer of , his team flew several of their designs many times at Miller Beach , Indiana , eventually deciding that the best was a biplane design. Like Lilienthal, he documented his work and also photographed it, and was busy corresponding with like-minded researchers around the world.
Chanute was particularly interested in solving the problem of aerodynamic instability of the aircraft in flight, which birds compensate for by instant corrections, but which humans would have to address either with stabilizing and control surfaces or by moving the center of gravity of the aircraft, as Lilienthal did.
The most disconcerting problem was longitudinal instability divergence , because as the angle of attack of a wing increases, the center of pressure moves forward and makes the angle increase yet more. Without immediate correction, the craft will pitch up and stall. Much more difficult to understand was the relationship between lateral and directional control. In Britain, Percy Pilcher , who had worked for Maxim and had built and successfully flown several gliders during the mid to late s, constructed a prototype powered aircraft in which, recent research has shown, would have been capable of flight.
However, like Lilienthal he died in a glider accident before he was able to test it. Publications, particularly Octave Chanute 's Progress in Flying Machines of and James Means ' The Problem of Manflight and Aeronautical Annuals — helped bring current research and events to a wider audience. The invention of the box kite during this period by the Australian Lawrence Hargrave led to the development of the practical biplane. In , Hargrave linked four of his kites together, added a sling seat, and flew 16 feet 4.
By demonstrating to a sceptical public that it was possible to build a safe and stable flying machine, Hargrave opened the door to other inventors and pioneers. Hargrave devoted most of his life to constructing a machine that would fly.
He believed passionately in open communication within the scientific community and would not patent his inventions. Instead, he scrupulously published the results of his experiments in order that a mutual interchange of ideas may take place with other inventors working in the same field, so as to expedite joint progress. The inventor of the box kite Lawrence Hargrave also experimented in the s with monoplane models and by had constructed a rotary engine driven by compressed air. Even balloon-jumping began to succeed. However, after several successful flights, during an ascension in July , a rope from the balloon struck the glider, and the glider suffered structural failure after release, resulting in Maloney's death.
From to , he designed and built flying machines and engines. On 14 August , Whitehead claimed to have carried out a controlled, powered flight in his Number 21 monoplane at Fairfield , Connecticut. An account of the flight appeared in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald and was repeated in newspapers throughout the world. He claimed to have flown a 10 kilometres 6. For many years the Whitehead claims were ignored or dismissed by mainstream aviation historians. In March , Jane's All the World's Aircraft published an editorial which accepted Whitehead's flight as the first manned, powered, controlled flight of a heavier-than-air craft.
After a distinguished career in astronomy and shortly before becoming Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution , Samuel Pierpont Langley started a serious investigation into aerodynamics at what is today the University of Pittsburgh. In , he published Experiments in Aerodynamics detailing his research, and then turned to building his designs. He hoped to achieve automatic aerodynamic stability, so he gave little consideration to in-flight control. It was launched from a spring-actuated catapult mounted on top of a houseboat on the Potomac River near Quantico, Virginia.
On both occasions the Aerodrome No. On 28 November , another successful flight was made with the Aerodrome No. So little remained of the original aircraft that it was given a new designation. With the successes of the Aerodrome No. Spurred by the Spanish—American War , the U. With the basic design apparently successfully tested, he then turned to the problem of a suitable engine.
He contracted Stephen Balzer to build one, but was disappointed when it delivered only 8 horsepower 6. Langley's assistant, Charles M. Now with both power and a design, Langley put the two together with great hopes. To his dismay, the resulting aircraft proved to be too fragile. Simply scaling up the original small models resulted in a design that was too weak to hold itself together.
Two launches in late both ended with the Aerodrome immediately crashing into the water. The pilot, Manly, was rescued each time. Also, the aircraft's control system was inadequate to allow quick pilot responses, and it had no method of lateral control, and the Aerodrome ' s aerial stability was marginal.
Langley's attempts to gain further funding failed, and his efforts ended. Nine days after his second abortive launch on 8 December, the Wright brothers successfully flew their Flyer. Glenn Curtiss made 93 modifications to the Aerodrome and flew this very different aircraft in The Wrights solved both the control and power problems that confronted aeronautical pioneers. They invented roll control using wing warping and combined roll with simultaneous yaw control using a steerable rear rudder.
Although wing-warping as a means of roll control was used only briefly during the early history of aviation, the innovation of combining roll and yaw control was a fundamental advance in flight control. For pitch control, the Wrights used a forward elevator canard , another design element that later became outmoded. The Wrights made rigorous wind-tunnel tests of airfoils and flight tests of full-size gliders. They not only built a working powered aircraft, the Wright Flyer , but also significantly advanced the science of aeronautical engineering.
They concentrated on the controllability of unpowered aircraft before attempting to fly a powered design. From to , they built and flew a series of three gliders. The first two were much less efficient than the Wrights expected, based on experiments and writings of their 19th-century predecessors. Their glider had only about half the lift they anticipated, and the glider performed even more poorly, until makeshift modifications made it serviceable. Seeking answers, the Wrights constructed their own wind tunnel and equipped it with a sophisticated measuring device to calculate lift and drag of different model-size wing designs they created.
It became the first manned, heavier-than-air flying machine that was mechanically controllable in all three axes: Its pioneering design also included wings with a higher aspect ratio than the previous gliders. The brothers successfully flew the glider hundreds of times, and it performed far better than their earlier two versions.
To obtain adequate power for their engine-driven Flyer, the Wrights designed and built a low-powered internal combustion engine. Using their wind tunnel data, they designed and carved wooden propellers that were more efficient than any before, enabling them to gain adequate performance from their low engine power. The Flyer's design was also influenced by the desire of the Wrights to teach themselves to fly safely without unreasonable risk to life and limb, and to make crashes survivable.
The limited engine power resulted in low flying speeds and the need to take off into a headwind. Modern analysis by Professor Fred E. Culick and Henry R. Rex has demonstrated that the Wright Flyer was so unstable as to be almost unmanageable by anyone but the Wrights, who had trained themselves in the glider. The Wrights continued developing their flying machines and flying at Huffman Prairie near Dayton, Ohio in — After a crash in , they rebuilt the Flyer III and made important design changes. They almost doubled the size of the elevator and rudder and moved them about twice the distance from the wings.
They added two fixed vertical vanes called "blinkers" between the elevators, and gave the wings a very slight dihedral. They disconnected the rudder from the wing-warping control, and as in all future aircraft, placed it on a separate control handle. The Flyer III became the first practical aircraft though without wheels and using a launching device , flying consistently under full control and bringing its pilot back to the starting point safely and landing without damage.
Eventually the Wrights would abandon the foreplane altogether, with the Model B of instead having a tail plane in the manner which was by then becoming conventional. According to the April issue of the Scientific American magazine, [98] the Wright brothers seemed to have the most advanced knowledge of heavier-than-air navigation at the time. However, the same magazine issue also claimed that no public flight had been made in the United States before its April issue. Hence, they devised the Scientific American Aeronautic Trophy in order to encourage the development of a heavier-than-air flying machine.
Once powered, controlled flight had been achieved, progress was still needed to create a practical flying machine for general use.
This period leading up to World War I is sometimes called the pioneer era of aviation. The history of early powered flight is very much the history of early engine construction. The Wrights designed their own engines. They used a single flight engine, a 12 horsepower 8. Whitehead's craft was powered by two engines of his design: Whitehead was an experienced machinist, and he is reported to have raised funds for his aircraft by making and selling engines to other aviators.
The British Green C. It powered many successful pioneer aircraft including those of A. Horizontally opposed designs were also produced. In a rotary engine, the crankshaft is fixed to the airframe and the whole engine casing and cylinders rotate with the propeller. Although this type had been introduced as long ago as by Lawrence Hargrave , improvements made to the Gnome created a robust, relatively reliable and lightweight design which revolutionised aviation and would see continuous development over the next ten years. Fuel was introduced into each cylinder direct from the crankcase meaning that only an exhaust valve was required.
Inline and vee types remained popular, with the German company Mercedes producing a series of water-cooled six-cylinder models. The lightness and strength of the biplane is offset by the inefficiency inherent in placing two wings so close together. Biplane and monoplane designs vied with each other, with both still in production by the outbreak of war in A notable development, although a failure, was the first cantilever monoplane ever built. Triplanes too were experimented with, notably a series built between and by the British pioneer A.
Going one better with four wings the quadruplane too made rare appearances. The Multiplane , having large numbers of very thin wings, was also experimented with, most successfully by Horatio Phillips. His final prototype confirmed the inefficiency and poor performance of the idea. Other radical approaches to wing design were also being tried.
The Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell devised a cellular octahedral wing form which, like the multiplane, proved disappointingly inefficient. Other lacklustre performers included the Edwards Rhomboidal , the Lee-Richards annular wing and varying numbers of wings one after the other in tandem. Many of these early experimental forms were in principle quite practical and have since reappeared.
Early work had focused primary on making a craft stable enough to fly but failed to offer full controllability, while the Wrights had sacrificed stability in order to make their Flyer fully controllable. A practical aircraft requires both. Although stability had been achieved by several designs, the principles were not fully understood and progress was erratic. Similarly, all-flying tail surfaces gave way to fixed stabilizers with hinged control surfaces attached.
The canard pusher configuration of the early Wright Flyers was supplanted by tractor propeller aircraft designs. A canard pusher biplane with pronounced wing dihedral, it had a Hargrave-style box-cell wing with a forward-mounted "boxkite" assembly which was movable to act as both elevator and rudder. He later added auxiliary surfaces between the wings as primitive ailerons to provide lateral control. Another design that appeared in was the Voisin biplane.
Early flying machines
This lacked any provision for lateral control, and could only make shallow turns using only rudder control, but was flown with increasing success during the year by Henri Farman , and on 13 January he won the 50, francs Deutsch de la Meurthe-Archdeacon Grand Prix de l'Aviation for being the first aviator to complete an officially observed 1 kilometre closed circuit flight, including taking off and landing under the aircraft's own power. His Antoinette IV of was a monoplane of what is now the conventional configuration, with tailplane and fin each bearing movable control surfaces, and ailerons on the wings.
The ailerons were not sufficiently effective and on later models were replaced by wing warping. At the end of , the Voisin brothers sold an aircraft ordered by Henri Farman to J. Angered, Farman built his own aircraft, adapting the Voisin design by adding ailerons. Following further modifications to the tail surfaces and ailerons, the Farman III became the most popular aeroplane sold between and , [ citation needed ] and was widely imitated. In Britain the American expatriate Samuel Cody flew an aircraft similar in layout to the Wright flyer in , incorporating a tailplane as well as a large front elevator.
In an improved model fitted with between-wing ailerons won the Michelin Cup competition, while Geoffrey de Havilland 's second Farman-style aircraft had ailerons on the upper wing and became the Royal Aircraft Factory F. Meanwhile, the Wrights themselves had also been wrestling with the problem of achieving both stability and control, experimenting further with the foreplane before first adding a second small plane at the tail and then finally removing the foreplane altogether.
The Unseen
They announced their two-seat Model B in and licensed it for production in as the Burgess Model F. Many other more radical layouts were tried, with only a few showing any promise. In the United Kingdom, J. Dunne developed a series of tailless pusher designs having swept wings with a conical upper surface. Dunne deliberately avoided full three-axis control, devising instead a system which was easier to operate and which he regarded as far safer in practice. Dunne's system would not be widely adopted. His tailless design reached its peak with the D. A problem with early seaplanes was the tendency for suction between the water and the aircraft as speed increased, holding the aircraft down and hindering takeoff.
The British designer John Cyril Porte invented the technique of placing a step in the bottom of the aircraft to break the suction, and this was incorporated in the Curtiss Model H.
Not Merely the Finest TV Documentary Series Ever Made - Issue 7: Waste - Nautilus
In aeroplanes remained frail and of little practical use. The limited engine power available meant that the effective payload was extremely limited. The basic structural and materials technology of the airframes mostly consisted of hardwood materials or steel tubing, braced with steel wires and covered in linen fabric doped with a flammable stiffener and sealant. However these evolving flying machines were recognised to be not just toys, but weapons in the making. In the Italian staff officer Giulio Douhet remarked:. The sky is about to become another battlefield no less important than the battlefields on land and sea In order to conquer the air, it is necessary to deprive the enemy of all means of flying, by striking at him in the air, at his bases of operation, or at his production centers.
We had better get accustomed to this idea, and prepare ourselves. Philae, the little robot that landed on a comet million miles from Earth on Wednesday, may have bounced off a bit. At the time of writing, its handlers are warily considering their next step, wondering whether to attempt to attach it more tightly to Churyumov-Gerasimenko 67P.
But whether or not it sticks, this has been a huge technological achievement. That is a journey on which each step has seemed impossible when it was made, only to become commonplace within a matter of years. If you happened to be in Paris years ago, for example, you might have seen something no one had ever seen before: Benjamin Franklin, the US founding father, was present.
He wrote in his journal: The awe is hardly surprising. This was the 18th century, and science and rationalism were in their infancy — the previous year, a woman had been executed in Switzerland for witchcraft. Yet mankind was daring to ascend into the heavens, an almost blasphemous departure from the mortal realm. Comet probe Philae shuts down, but not before transmitting valuable secrets. What do you do when your landing probe bounces into a crater? Rosetta comet mission update. No one knew, in those days, whether humans could survive at altitude; Louis XVI, the king of France, had suggested using convicted prisoners for the first flight.
When none of these test subjects exploded or asphyxiated, a manned free flight was scheduled. Once balloon flight had been demonstrated, it spread throughout European cities, with huge crowds gathering. Within years, the technology had been improved upon, the principles better understood; a balloon filled with hydrogen crossed the English Channel in By , the French army was already using balloons in war, as an observation post in the Battle of Fleurus. As humanity has struggled to get itself — and its representatives — ever further from the surface of its planet, this pattern repeats itself.
One hundred and twenty years after the Montgolfiers, Orville and Wilbur Wright were trying to become the first men to fly in a craft that was heavier than the air around it. They were far from the first to try: Sir George Cayley, a Yorkshireman, had designed, built and flown a small glider, in He also established the basic principle of aerodynamics, that if air pressure is lower on the upper side of a wing, it generates lift. In the century after him, various people tried to use this principle to make a flying machine capable of carrying a human.