John A. Weeks III wrote:
In article , Mike
wrote:


One hundred years to the day after Orville and Wilbur Wright soared
into history on man's first powered flight, modern-day aviators sought
to duplicate the feat, with a little help from 21st-century technology
and supercomputers. They flopped badly.


You can hardly hold them accountable for bad weather. The flyer
needs 16 horsepower and 20 knots of wind, neither of which were
present due to the lack of wind, the addition of trees to the flying
field, and the wet weather (which reduced engine performance).
There is a very, very narrow flight envelope for the 1903 flyer,
and those conditions did not exist yesterday. That doesn't mean
that the flyer cannot fly, or that the program is a flop, it just
means that they need to try again some other day when the right
conditions are present.

Actually, the Flyer had 12hp *peak* performance from the engine. But
you're right. The replica didn't have the wind conditions the Wrights
had (which was critical to their getting airborne) and it was soaked by
rain, making it heavier. What the replica attempt showed very nicely, I
think, is just how marginal the Flyer was and how the Wrights were
actually very *lucky* to have got airborne in 1903 - something they
discovered to their horror the following year.