The Largest paper airplane in history

July 4, 2012 4:37 PM

On March 21, the Pima Air & Space Museum built and flew the largest paper airplane in history. The "Arturo Desert Eagle" was 45 feet long and weighed 800 pounds. Carried up to 2700 feet by a helicopter before being released, it flew almost a mile and then crashed rather spectacularly (YT).
posted by Chocolate Pickle (46 comments total)

Helicoptor sounds like an '80s action figure!
posted by dunkadunc at 4:40 PM on July 4, 2012

It seemed like it just tipped forward, headed for the ground and only had minimal lift. Was it too nose-heavy due to the tow linkage?
posted by tommasz at 4:45 PM on July 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Was it too nose-heavy due to the tow linkage?

Yeah, they should have taped some pennies to the wings.
posted by orme at 4:49 PM on July 4, 2012 [14 favorites]

Flight, or nose-dive?
posted by Flashman at 4:49 PM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I was expecting more lift. It's got some kind of rigid frame to it, too, right?

More like weak glider design but still pretty cool looking.
posted by spitbull at 4:49 PM on July 4, 2012

The Pima Air & Space Museum! Another excellent museum outside of Tucson. I only went there once or twice as a kid, which is a shame considering it was only an hour or so outside of town, but that museum is freakin' awesome. Their outdoor airplane graveyard was just about my favorite thing ever. They have a Super Guppy, several Stratos, and I got to sit in the Eagle.
posted by carsonb at 4:50 PM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the video. I don't see that it "flew almost a mile." I see it being towed by a helicopter, which I distinguish from "flying" or even "gliding," and then I see it being released and pretty much immediately nose-diving into the dirt. It doesn't seem that impressive (although I'm not an aeronautical engineer, so what do I know) and I would think you could get roughly the same video if you built the airplane out of wicker.

The sidebar-featured videos, on the other hand? Jet RC BIG 29? And Boeing 747 RC model First Flight? Right cool.
posted by cribcage at 5:06 PM on July 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

Is that helicopter the Screaming Mimi?
posted by rlk at 5:12 PM on July 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

I see it being released and pretty much immediately nose-diving into the dirt.

That mass in earth gravity would have hit the earth in 13 seconds if it had no air resistance at all. It took 23 seconds.

In order to discover if it actually was producing lift we would need to take it back up there and drop it from a static starting point.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:20 PM on July 4, 2012

Where was the 10 foot long paper clip?
posted by desjardins at 5:26 PM on July 4, 2012

Yeah, that was ridiculously bad. That was not a glide, that was a plummet.

For context: one of the specifications for airplanes is their 'glide ratio' -- that is, how many units of distance they will cover horizontally for every unit of altitude they lose. Just in a quick check, a Cessna 172 has a glide ratio of about 9:1, so a Cessna starting at 10,000 feet should be able to glide about 90,000 feet before hitting the ground. Apparently, commercial airlines typically have about twice that glide rate -- big wings, and remarkably lightweight for such huge things. (part of why they cost so very, very much money.)

So, if you were to drag a Cessna by helicopter up to 2703 feet, you would expect it to be able to fly about 24,327 feet, or about 4.6 miles, before touching down. A large jet should get about twice that far. However, both probably wouldn't go as far as that from a standing start, because I believe the glide rates are predicated on already starting at cruise speed. The jet might very well crash before gaining enough velocity to even fly in the first place, and the Cessna would lose a fair bit of altitude as well.

Regardless, in this case, the paper plane started at 2703 feet, and transited 0.93 miles, for a total ratio of about 1.8 to 1, a truly dismal performance.

If they'd given it some forward airspeed before dropping it, they might have gotten a much more impressive flight. You're supposed to throw paper airplanes, not drop them.
posted by Malor at 5:35 PM on July 4, 2012 [15 favorites]

That's not flying, that's just falling with style.
posted by tspae at 5:53 PM on July 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

That's not flying, that's falling with style.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:54 PM on July 4, 2012

Grea idea, but you have to throw paper airplanes, not just lift them up really hig and drop them. That technique is for handkerchief parachutes with green army men.
posted by TedW at 6:04 PM on July 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

Aren't there rules in paper airplane competition that they need to be constructed from a single piece of paper? Or are there other classes were composites or partial paper sheets are allowed? Or is that not "a thing?"
posted by porpoise at 6:25 PM on July 4, 2012

HOW SICK IS THAT
posted by scrowdid at 6:25 PM on July 4, 2012

Notice it does not so much fly, as plummet.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:57 PM on July 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure there is a sanctioning body for world's largest paper airplane, but there should be one.
posted by humanfont at 6:58 PM on July 4, 2012

I'm very jealous that i could neither build nor launch an 800 pound, 45 foot long paper airplane, so i'll chime in with "that wasn't really flying so much as crashing".

Used to build paper airplanes for my brothers for a nickle apiece; i got pretty elaborate after a while. But i never considered scaling up quite like this.
posted by dethb0y at 7:27 PM on July 4, 2012

I wish they'd gotten a long-angle shot of the flight and/or crash, rather than just showing the airplane-eye perspective (cool though it was). I'd wager a lot of the response here that the plane just "plummeted" may be because it's hard to get a sense of its actual flight path from the video shown.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:58 PM on July 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Well, Empress, it was lifted over a half a mile high, and it didn't even transit a whole mile horizontally, so it was in a very steep dive the whole time it was in the air.

Putting wings on a brick would probably have worked just about as well. Maybe better, if they were big wings.
posted by Malor at 9:09 PM on July 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Regardless, in this case, the paper plane started at 2703 feet, and transited 0.93 miles, for a total ratio of about 1.8 to 1, a truly dismal performance.

By contrast, even the most basic flying squirrel suit aka wing suit (i.e. a human being in what amounts to sophisticated aeronautical tailoring) exceeds a 2:1 glide ratio, and some of the more elaborate designs exceed 5:1. So, um, yeah.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:20 PM on July 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

A detailed technical explanation.
posted by dhartung at 11:27 PM on July 4, 2012

Malor's comment on glide ratios surprised me, so I went looking:
Aircraft (year) (L/D)max
Boeing B707-320 19.4
Douglas DC-8 17.9
Airbus A320 17.
Boeing 767-200 19.
Boeing 747-100 17.7
Douglas DC-10 17.7
Lockeed Tristar L1011 17.0
Douglas DC-9 (1966) 16.5
Boeing B727-200 16.4
Fokker 50 (1966) 16
Douglas DC-3 (1935) 14.7
Ford Trimotor (1927) 12.
Wright Flyer I (1903) 8.3

So a 767 at cruising altitude could travel almost 120 miles before it hit the deck with no engine!
posted by bystander at 1:38 AM on July 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Thanks, bystander! I was much too lazy to go that far with it.

I hadn't realized just how bad a Cessna is. Ouch. It's barely better than the original Wright Flyer, at least for glide ratio.
posted by Malor at 1:58 AM on July 5, 2012

Regarding the glide ratio of a commercial airliner: sometimes, terrifyingly, it does come into play. For those who haven't heard it yet, the story of the Gimli Glider.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 3:11 AM on July 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

Another Canadian plane, this time gliding to safety on a speck of land in the middle of the Atlantic.
posted by bonobothegreat at 4:37 AM on July 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

For those who haven't heard it yet, the story of the Gimli Glider.

To this day Aircraft #604 is known to insiders as "The Gimli Glider."

Is it possible to find out which aircraft is flying your proposed route before you buy tickets? And maybe to search all routes to find out where a particular aircraft (604, for example) is flying? Because some people might want to purposely take a ride on the Gimli Glider, while others might want to stay the hell away from it.
posted by pracowity at 4:51 AM on July 5, 2012

That mass in earth gravity would have hit the earth in 13 seconds if it had no air resistance at all. It took 23 seconds.

How long would it have taken as a big unfolded sheet?
posted by DU at 5:31 AM on July 5, 2012

Regarding the glide ratio of a commercial airliner: sometimes, terrifyingly, it does come into play. For those who haven't heard it yet, the story of the Gimli Glider.

From the link:

Pearson and Quintal immediately began making preparations for a one engine landing. Then another fuel light lit up. Two minutes later, just as preparations were being completed, the EICAS issued a sharp bong--indicating the complete and total loss of both engines. Says Quintal "It's a sound that Bob and I had never heard before. It's not in the simulator." After the "bong," things got quiet. Real quite. Starved of fuel, both Pratt & Whitney engines had flamed out.

Holy shit. Extraordinarily bad luck balanced out by extraordinarily good luck. Shudder to think what would have happened if Quintal hadn't known about Gimli, Pearson hadn't known how to glide, and both hadn't trusted one another completely.
posted by likeso at 6:01 AM on July 5, 2012

After the "bong," things got quiet.

I think I've detected their problem.
posted by pracowity at 6:12 AM on July 5, 2012 [4 favorites]

An FPP on the Gimli Glider
posted by TedW at 6:18 AM on July 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Stories about successful emergency landings never fail to fascinate me. The fact that a jumbo jet flies at all is a little hard to fathom, really. The fact that there are people who are smart and well-trained enough to fly them while they are completely and utterly broken is even more unbelievable. If I saw the Gimli Glider scenario in a movie, I'd think it was ridiculous.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:19 AM on July 5, 2012

Thanks, Slithy_Tove and TedW. What a story.
posted by likeso at 6:21 AM on July 5, 2012

Canadians don't - or do - have much luck with unpowered commercial flights. In 2001 Transat Flight 236 glided 120km over the Atlantic to Lajes Air Base in the Azores.

Gliding to a landing, or crash, is not that uncommon. Wikipedia lists five instances in the last ten years.
posted by MuffinMan at 6:29 AM on July 5, 2012

Hmm. "Crashed." "Ditched." "Shortly after takeoff. "On approach." "No survivors." "Some survivors." "Craft badly damaged."

I think I want Canadian pilots in my glider.
posted by likeso at 7:05 AM on July 5, 2012

To be safe they re-ran the numbers three times to be absolutely, positively sure the refuelers hadn't made any mistakes; each time using 1.77 pounds/liter as the specific gravity factor. This was the factor written on the refueler's slip and used on all of the other planes in Air Canada's fleet. The factor the refuelers and the crew should have used on the brand new, all-metric 767 was .8 kg/liter of kerosene.

Metric kills, people.
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:04 AM on July 5, 2012

Tell Me No Lies: That mass in earth gravity would have hit the earth in 13 seconds if it had no air resistance at all. It took 23 seconds.

So, we're agreed there was air resistance, then?
posted by IAmBroom at 9:04 AM on July 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

They couldn't even be bothered to show footage of the wreckage. Bah.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:06 AM on July 5, 2012

Yeah, they should have taped some pennies to the wings.

Hmmm, Dad taught me to make the hind end a little heavier for lift.

So much for their engineering specialist.
posted by BlueHorse at 10:02 AM on July 5, 2012

I think that the major failure in their design was that the wings did not remain rigid enough for significant lift to occur. On the other hand this may have been part of their plan because an uncontrolled glider traveling any significat distance would have presented a hazard to aviation.

I now desire to build an enourmous trebuchet like launcher with a large arm and hand shaped launcher to fling huge paper airplanes in a more authentic and consistent manner. I wonder of this is an appropriate kickstarter project.
posted by humanfont at 10:53 AM on July 5, 2012

deralia et erratum:Great idea, but you have to throw paper airplanes, not just lift them up really high and drop them. That technique is for handkerchief parachutes with green army men.

They push paratroopers out the door from about 1200 feet at about 100 mph. When the canopy opens, they lose all their forward momentum in about .0035 seconds. You can hear their assholes slamming shut all the way from the drop zone. Most military parachutes have a glide path of 1:4. You won't miss the rock quarry on purpose.
posted by mule98J at 11:14 AM on July 5, 2012

Here's a paper airplane video that won't disappoint.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:46 AM on July 5, 2012 [3 favorites]

I'm sure cargo chopper guys are used to carrying difficult rigs but when that thing started yawing and you could see it causing the chopper to bob about I realized those guys gotta have some stones...
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:58 PM on July 5, 2012

Speaking of large, gliding airliners, don't forget about British Airways Flight 9.

"On 24 June 1982, the route was flown by the City of Edinburgh, a 747-236B. The aircraft flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung (approximately 180 kilometres (110 mi) south-east of Jakarta, Indonesia), resulting in the failure of all four engines. The reason for the failure was not immediately apparent to the crew or ground control. The aircraft was diverted to Jakarta in the hope that enough engines could be restarted to allow it to land there. The aircraft was able to glide far enough to exit the ash cloud, and all engines were restarted (although one failed again soon after), allowing the aircraft to land safely at the Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in Jakarta." [wiki]
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 5:51 PM on July 5, 2012

I was there during the flight of the giant paper airplane. What the video doesn't show is that afterward a giant Mrs. Evans confiscated the airplane and punished the whole class by making us miss recess.

Mrs. Evans set back aviation history that day.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:00 AM on July 6, 2012 [2 favorites]