Giant Paper Airplane Takes (Brief) Flight Over Arizona 54
The L.A. Times reports that 12-year-old Arturo Valdenegro's winning entry in a paper-airplane contest got
upscaled to slightly larger dimensions, courtesy of Pima Air & Space Museum's Giant Paper Airplane Project, and flown, via helicopter assistance, in the Arizona desert. Slightly larger, in this case, means the plane based on Valdenegro's designs "was 45 feet long with a 24-foot wingspan and weighed in at a whopping 800 pounds," constructed of a tough, corrugated material called falcon board. Unfortunately, the tow didn't take the plane as high as planned (only 2,703 feet, instead of four or five thousand) so the resulting flight was brief and destructive — which doesn't make the accompanying launch video any less fun to watch, though I wish it showed more of the flight, including its end. (I tend to always make the same kind of acrobatic glider; do you have any good paper-airplane hints?)
Re:As an European citizen... (Score:2, Insightful)
As an American Citizen, when it's the right time for us, not when anonymous coward citizens from other nations whine about it. It's not your problem. Deal with it.