Existing comment:
Rotary Wings: The Challenges of Control:
"Like all novices, we began with the helicopter, but soon saw that it had no future and dropped it. The helicopter does with great labor only what the balloon does without labor, and is no more fitted than the balloon for rapid horizontal flight. If its engine stops, it must fall with deathly violence for it can neither float like the balloon nor glide like the aeroplane. The helicopter is much easier to design that the aeroplane, but it is worthless when done."
-- Wilbur Wright, 1909
Wilbur Wright anticipated the challenges of helicopter design, and almost three decades passed before designers and engineers could satisfactorily address them. He was wrong in several respects. The helicopter was much more difficult to design than the airplane, it could glide, and it would prove to be anything but worthless. |