• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Looking back on a century of flight, space travel

Posted on: Thursday, 10 July 2003, 06:00 CDT

In 100 years of powered flight, man has gone from the first flight of 120 feet on the dunes of Kitty Hawk, N.C., to sending a spacecraft beyond the solar system.

It all began on Dec. 17, 1903, when Orville Wright piloted the first-heavier-than-air machine during a 12-second flight that went just 120 feet, reaching a speed of 30 miles per hour. Named The Flyer, the plane was built by two brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, who flipped a coin for the privilege of flying the machine for the first time. They made three more flights that day. The longest by Wilbur was 852 feet in 59 seconds.

The Flyer was developed from biplane gliders. It was composed of wood and fabric, and braced with steel wire. It had a length of 21 feet with a wing span of 40 feet, 4 inches. It stood 9 feet, 3 inches high and weighed 605 pounds. It was powered by a 12- horsepower gas engine connected to a propeller.

Besides the Wright brothers, only five persons witnessed the historic event. And only three newspapers reported the flight. Even the newspaper in the Wrights' hometown of Dayton, Ohio, ignored the achievement.

While it may have been seen as unimportant at the time, today there are some 50,000 commercial airline flights occurring worldwide each day. The Wright brothers' flight was just the first of many achievements in our never-ending quest to fly faster and higher. Here are some selected moments in a look back on 100 years of aviation and space travel:

Nov. 13, 1907: First helicopter is flown by Paul Cornu, a French inventor. The flight lasted only 20 seconds and hovered just 1 foot above ground.

July 25, 1909: Louis Bleriot of France becomes the first person to fly across the English Channel.

May 25, 1910: Orville and Wilbur Wright make a short flight at Huffman Field in Dayton, Ohio. It is the only time the brothers are in the air together.

Dec. 10, 1911: Cal Rodgers completes the first transcontinental flight in the Wright EX "Vin Fiz" from Long Island, N.Y., to Pasadena, Calif., in a series of short flights that takes 84 days.

March 1, 1912: Capt. Albert Berry makes the first parachute jump from a powered airplane.

April 16, 1912: American Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to pilot a plane across the English Channel.

July 14-15, 1919: First nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by British Capt. John Alcock and Lt. Albert Brown, from Newfoundland to Ireland.

March 16, 1926: Robert Goddard launches the world's first liquid propellant rocket in an orchard. The rocket climbed 41 feet.

May 20-21, 1927: First nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic by Charles A. Lindbergh in Spirit of St. Louis.

Sept. 24, 1929: Several small solid-propellant rockets were attached to a Junkers-33 seaplane and the first jet-assisted airplane takeoff is recorded.

1931: Britain's Frank Whittle designed and patented the first jet engine.

May 20-21, 1932: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean; she also makes the first solo flight from Hawaii to the American mainland, Jan. 11-12, 1935.

1936: Lockheed Aircraft Corporation builds the first pressurized cabin plane.

Aug. 24, 1939: The Heinkel He 178 makes the first jet-powered flight.

Sept. 14, 1939: The VS-300 becomes the first practical helicopter to ever take off. Igor Sikorsky pilots the vehicle.

Oct. 14, 1947: In the rocket-powered Bell X-1, Capt. Charles E. Yeager flies faster than sound for the first time.

Jan. 5, 1949: Capt. Charles E. Yeager sets a new unofficial climbing speed record of more than 13,000 feet per minute in the Bell X-1.

Jan. 15-18, 1957: First jet flight around the world.

Oct. 4, 1957: The Russians launch Sputnik I, the first artificial Earth satellite.

Nov. 3, 1957: Sputnik II is launched carrying the dog "Laika."

Oct. 11, 1958: NASA's first launch with Pioneer 1.

March 3, 1959: First successful U.S. fly of the moon by Pioneer 4.

Sept. 15, 1959: A. Scott Crossfield becomes the first to pilot the rocket-powered X-15, the fastest and highest flying aircraft in history.

April 12, 1961: Maj. Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to travel in space by completing one full orbit of the earth.

May 5, 1961: Alan Shepard in Freedom 7 becomes the first American in space.

Feb. 20, 1962: John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth in Friendship 7.

June 16, 1963: Russian Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman to fly solo in space.

Aug. 22, 1963: X-15 sets altitude record of 354,200 feet (67 miles) with a speed of 4,159 miles per hour.

March 18, 1965: Alexei Leonov takes first walk in space.

June 3-7, 1965: First U.S. space walk by Ed White in Gemini IV.

March 2, 1969: The first flight of the Concorde.

July 20, 1969: Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the lunar surface while command module pilot Michael Collins orbits overhead.

Nov. 13, 1971: Mariner 9 is the first mission to orbit another planet when it arrives at Mars.

Dec 3, 1973: Pioneer 10 executes the first flyby of Jupiter. (Launched on March 2, 1972, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to venture out of the solar system. The spacecraft fell silent on Jan. 22, 2003, after nearly 31 years.)

July 20, 1976: Viking 1 is the first U.S. landing of a spacecraft on another planet (Mars).

Nov. 11-16, 1982: Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on first operational mission. (On Feb. 2003, the Columbia breaks apart on its return from a 16-day mission. A crew of seven is killed.

Jan. 28, 1986: The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes seconds after liftoff. Seven are killed.

July, 1989: The U.S. Air Force's B-2 "Spirit" bomber blends composite materials with stealth technology.

April 27, 1995: The Global Positioning System becomes fully operational.

July 4 to December, 1997: Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner explore Mars.

Oct. 24, 1998: Deep Space 1, the first ion propulsion spacecraft, is launched to fly in space.

July 30, 2002: The first successful flight test of a hypersonic scramjet engine in Australia. This air-breathing scramjet engine, which burns hydrogen fuel, could theoretically power aircraft at Mach 8 for two-hours trans-Atlantic flights.

Source: This partial listing of a historical timeline on the first 100 years of flight was printed with permission from Space Day Foundation, a private organization in Washington, D.C., that promotes space-related education and scientific studies.

More News in this Category