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December 07, 2006
Dr. Paul MacCready, Founder and Chairman of the Board, AeroVironment, Inc., 12-8-06
n 1971, Dr. MacCready founded AeroVironment, Inc., a diversified company headquartered in Monrovia, CA. The company provides services, developments, and products in the fields of alternative energy, power electronics, and energy efficient vehicles for operation on land and in air and water. He is Chairman of the Board of AeroVironment, and active in all the newer technology areas.
Dr. MacCready became internationally known in 1977 as the "father of human-powered flight" when his Gossamer Condor made the first sustained, controlled flight by a heavier-than-air craft powered solely by its pilot's muscles. For the feat he received the $95,000 Henry Kremer Prize established in 1959. Two years later, his team created the Gossamer Albatross, another 70-pound craft with a 96 foot wingspan that, with DuPont sponsorship, achieved a human-powered flight across the English Channel. That flight, made by "pilot-engine" Bryan Allen, took almost three hours. It won the new Kremer prize of $213,000, at the time the largest cash prize in aviation history. Some years later, first with DOD and then NASA support, his teams moved Solar Challenger technology into a series of solar-powered stratospheric fliers. The 100' Pathfinder achieved 71,500' in 1997. The 120' Pathfinder Plus climbed over 80,000 feet in 1998. August 2001 the giant 247' Helios reached 96,863' – over 2 miles higher than any plane had ever sustained level flight! Development is ongoing for a system that can provide power for several weeks at 65,000 feet without solar cells. Eventually, such non-polluting fliers will probe conditions in the stratosphere, perform surveillance, and serve as 11 mile high, station-keeping “SkyTower™” radio relays for multichannel, wide bandwidth telecommunications.
Dr. MacCready’s team's first land vehicle was the GM Sunraycer, for which AeroVironment provided project management, systems engineering, aerodynamics and structural design, power electronics development, as well as construction and testing for General Motors and Hughes Aircraft. In November 1987, this solar-powered car won the 1,867 mile race across Australia, averaging 41.6 mph (50 percent faster than the second place vehicle in the field of 24 contestants). The goal of the Sunraycer, in addition to winning the race, was to advance transportation technology that makes fewer demands on the earth's resources and environment, and to inspire students to become engineers. In January 1990, the GM Impact was introduced, a battery-powered sports car with snappy "0 to 60 mph in 8 seconds" performance. GM later turned the Impact into the production vehicle EV 1. In 1985 the AeroVironment team had proposed to GM the initial concept for the Impact. In 1988-89 GM supported AeroVironment to handle program management, systems engineering, design of the electrical and mechanical elements, and build the vehicle, integrating the participation of a dozen GM divisions. This pioneering car became a catalyst for the initial California Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate and the related global developments of battery-powered and alternatively-fueled vehicles.
The unique vehicles produced by MacCready's teams have received international attention through exhibits, books, television documentaries, and innumerable articles and cover stories in magazines and newspapers. They, MacCready, and AeroVironment have become symbols for creativity. The Gossamer Condor, Gossamer Albatross, Solar Challenger, QN, Sunraycer, and Pathfinder Plus were all donated to the Smithsonian. The Gossamer Condor is on permanent display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. A film about it, "The Flight of the Gossamer Condor", won the Academy Award for Best Documentary - Short Subject in 1978.
Dr. MacCready's achievements have brought him many honors, including the Lifetime Achievement Aviation Week Laureate Award He was included in Time magazine’s “The Century’s Greatest Minds” series “on the 100 most influential people of the century”.
Posted by David Lemberg at December 7, 2006 01:32 PM Return to SCIENCE AND SOCIETY home page