Taking flight
Which pioneer aviator had a beak? Discover the answer to this and more with the science of flight.
Monsters in the air
Making things even more tricky by using paper, what's the biggest thing that can fly?
It's just a lot of hot air, really, but the balloon goes up for the Science Shack Team while Adam Hart-Davis gets a lift from their latest project.
Tomorrow, Adam will be at the airship hangars at Cardington, Bedford. Here he and the team hope to build a flying machine out of paper to carry his weight. Along the way Adam will find the answer to the question 'What is the biggest thing that can fly?' and some amazing facts about flight.
These massive hangars were built during the First World War to house gigantic airships, copies of the famous German Zeppelins. By 1930 the British airship industry collapsed after a ship called the R101 (built here) crashed into a hillside in France.
The Germans continued to build airships until the Hindenberg airship caught fire while landing in New Jersey. Sixty-two of the ninety-seven passengers aboard survived and the exact cause is still disputed today. But the damage was done. Passengers felt that airships were too dangerous.
However, today airships are back in business - as advertising hoardings, mine sweeping systems, low flying satellites and even for traffic surveillance. Today members of the Shanghai traffic police are at Cardington to learn all about the airship they have commissioned from the company ATG Ltd who now do a booming trade in airships here.
8pm
The team is hard at work amongst the Christmas decorations at their hotel cutting a template for the 17 metre tall paper balloon they hope to launch Adam aloft with. Science Shack builders Jem and Chris are looking a bit challenged by all these reams of paper. Nothing to drill, weld or chamfer, yet? Will all this origami make them into softies?
20th November
8am
Glenn Davidson, paper sculptor, rolls out the paper for the balloon with the help of the Science Shack team inside the aircraft hangar. Glenn is helping the team because he produces magnificent paper sculpture-cum-installation-cum events in public spaces and is an expert at handling Big Paper Projects - like this one.
He has a computer model for building any shape you like. Each section of paper necessary to make up the balloon shape is marked out using measurements calculated by his programme. It's a bit like the shapes on a dress pattern.
11am
At the other end of the hangar a box has arrived with Aeroflot stamped on the outside. Inside it is one MIR space station (used) cosmonaut's suit. It belongs to Colin Prescott who hopes, next summer, to break the world record for altitude in a balloon. He and his colleague Andy Elson are going right to the edge of the atmosphere where the only way they will survive the cold and the lack of oxygen is in a space suit.
11.30am
Adam helps Colin get into his space suit. Unfortunately he has been sent his rather smaller colleague's suit by mistake so there is a little shoving and pushing to do to get him into it.
12.15pm
Adam discovers that the altitude record was last broken in 1961 by two US navy officers doing research on pressure suits for the space programme. They reached 113,000 feet. Colin and Andy hope to get to 135,000 feet. If they reach this height they will be virtually unbeatable - every extra foot requires a huge increase in capacity in the balloon and is simply impractical. Temperatures are a cool 80 degrees below zero. They will be sitting on a high tech but open platform wrapped up warm with very special duvets. At that height - with no air to make sound waves, they cannot hear each other speak so will need to communicate with radios from inside their space suits.
Qinetiq (the name of their balloon and their sponsor) will be 1200 feet tall (seven times the height of Nelson's Column - by now an official international unit of height) and be lifted by helium. 'The only way to describe it is that it is like a giant condom - with a bubble on the end' says Colin. As the balloon rises up the shape fills out as the inert helium gas expands to fill the balloon.
Adam asks Colin where space begins. There is no real answer to this and it is disputed - (how can you measure this exactly?) - but in the USA space officially begins at 100,000 feet - making this the first manned British space flight!
next > Page 1 of 4
Content last updated: 30/05/2006
