Jim Phillips wrote:
>
> Jim Trudeau writes:
>
> >Speaking of which I see that NASA or the Smithsonian or someone is doing
> >wind tunnel tests of the Wright brothers plane to try and figure out how
> it ever flew at all.
>
> It is a fact that no one other than the Wright Brothers has been able to
> make that original plane fly/glide/whatever-you-want-to-call-it.  Even
> exact copies (obviously, the original is no longer around) cannot be
> made to fly.
>
An airplane flying depends on a wing shape the gives the wing
lift as it
moves through the air.  The original Wright Brothers plane was so
flimsy that it probably lost its wing shape shortly after it
flew.
However the Wright Brothers knew what the principle is as
attested
to their later planes which also flew.

FWIW.

Nick D.