On Saturday, we went to Oshkosh to visit the EAA Fly-in . For those unfamiliar, it's the annual expo of the Experimental Aircraft Association, members worldwide drive, fly, hop, skip, and crawl in to particiapte in all things related to flight.
We hadn't been to it before, it falling under the local thing where you don't bother doing local things. There are always displays of many kinds of aircraft, commercial, military, and experimental. And there's the EAA museum.
This year, the Scaled Composites SpaceShip One was on display. As a bonus, Chuck Yeager, the first man to travel faster than the speed of sound, was giving a presentation. And finally, an air show.
The entire weekend was an inspirational reminder of the ability of man, and men, to go beyond. Not only to ask "why", but to ask "Why Not?" and then to make exceptional efforts to drive the boundaries of humankind farther. Nearly every display on the grounds documented a man or woman who transcended, who battled, who persevered.
Burt Rutan, the designer of Spaceship One and several other groundbreaking vehicles, has been a member of the EAA forever. As a gesture, he brought SpaceShip One to Oshkosh as its last public appearance; it is on its way to permanent display in the Smithsonian. Another of his aircraft, the GlobalFlyer (first aircraft to fly solo nonstop around the world) was there, and a full size mockup of the Voyager, the first nonstop, non-refueled global flight, was in the museum. All of these vehicles had one thing in common: the pilots quarters were remarkably cramped and difficult to work in for any length of thime, let alone the extended periods necessary for some of these flights. The people who piloted them made remarkable achievements.
The air show highlighted the day. the initial portion was a display of warplanes, roughly chronologically; starting with P-51s and working through up to modern planes; all of them made simulated bombing runs, with ground fired pyrotechnics illustrating the detonations. The final demo was a Harrier jet; when it slowed to a halt, then lowered to the ground and took off vertically again it was eerie; it seemed unreal to see a jet that hovered in mid air.
But the final display of technological prowess was not a demonstration of better fighting equipment, but individual achievement, the "Why Not?"; Spaceship One made a demo flight. In flight, the tandem plane was exquisitely graceful, and I quite literally watched in astonishment. It was an unrepeatable opportunity to see this history making aircraft fly.
Rutan was commenting over the loudspeakers while the craft was flying. He was talking about how as a child, his father and grandfather would go to watch aircraft take off at the local field, and now air flight has become passe. Even the Shuttle has become routine. His prediction is that within a very short span of years, space travelling aircraft will become common sights at regonal airports, and the descendents of SpaceShip One will be taking our children into space.
It was an inspirational thing to see. I wish I could express the optimism I felt while watching this. I felt like a child watching the lunar landings again. In lieu of pretty words or inspirational passages, here are some more photos:
I remember my first trip to the EAA convention. It was exactly 20 years ago, before the opening of the museum, when Wittman field was merely an airstrip. I too marveled at the high level of craftsmanship and technical innovation displayed at the collection of private aircraft. The military show was also moving, but the highlight of the event was the first appearance by a British Airways Concorde. There was a way to take a quick flight (to Canada and back?)aboard the plane, but I was astonished to simply watch as it did a series of low level fly-bys and landings no more than 100 yards away from me. Although it did not achieve speeds to create a sonic boom, it was the largest, fastest, loudest thing I had ever witnessed up close and personal (at least since my 1974 Pontiac Catalina). It went on to make appearances at 4 more EAA events before it was cancelled following the tragic crash near Paris in 2000.
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