Success Despite a Setback

According to Greek legend, Daedalus was the first person to defy gravity. Daedalus, the great artist, architect, and master builder, was commissioned by King Minos to build a labyrinth on Crete and ultimately fell victim to his own success. King Minos imprisoned him and his son, Icarus, inside the labyrinth. To escape, Daedalus built wings out of bird feathers held together with wax. Father and son managed to take off successfully. Unfortunately, Icarus did not follow his father’s wise advice and flew too close to the sun. This caused the wax on his wings to melt, and Icarus plummeted into the sea.

In 1979, British industrialist Henry Kremer offered a prize of 100,000 pounds sterling for a flight across the English Channel powered solely by human muscle power. Scientists at MIT took up the challenge by developing lightweight aircraft. Among them was Paul MacCready, owner of Aero Vironment in Pasadena. On June 12, 1979, cyclist Bryan Allen pedaled MacCready’s Gossamer Albatross from Folkestone, England, 36 km across the English Channel to the French coast. MIT had lost this bet, but did not abandon the concept of “human-powered flight” and drew attention to itself by setting various world records.

In 1984, a team of MIT researchers led by John Langford decided to replicate Daedalus’s flight from Crete to Santorini. This would have surpassed Bryan Allen’s flight across the English Channel by a factor of three in terms of distance. Just one year later, an MIT team traveled to Crete to investigate the conditions surrounding the takeoff and the flight route. Work on the “Light Eagle” prototype was eventually tested as early as 1986 with successful flight trials on a salt lake. The prototype was 9 m long and had a wingspan of 35 m! Only lightweight materials such as balsa wood, foam, plastic film, etc., were used. Weight: 42 kg.

The aircraft intended for the record-breaking flight was christened “Daedalus”—in keeping with the myth. It had become even lighter, weighing just 32 kg. The variable-pitch propeller had a diameter of 3.45 m. Greek cyclist Kanellos Kanellopoulos took off from Heraklion Airport on April 23, 1988, and, thanks to light tailwinds, flew toward Santorini at about 29 km/h. He covered the 117 km in about four hours. A gust of wind caught the aircraft shortly before it touched down on the beach. The aircraft could not withstand the force and broke apart. Yet the flight of the modern Daedalus had been a success.

Photos: GEO 12/1988