(At Least) 100 Years Of Powered Human Flight

David Rennie in Washington for the (UK) Telegraph writes:

An army of 35,000 aviation buffs, President George W Bush among them, will descend on the sand dunes of North Carolina today to mark the centenary of the first controlled flight by a heavier-than-air craft - the Wright brothers' 12-second hop.

Weather and luck permitting, Kevin Koschersberger, an engineering lecturer and early aircraft fanatic, will pilot a near-perfect replica of the Wright brother's flyer.

He aims to launch off 100 years to the minute after Orville Wright's historic flight, at 10.35am local time, or 3.35pm GMT.

The re-enactment will require a headwind of 12-17 mph, and either clear skies or a light rain. The craft was, and is, extremely hard to fly, remaining stable only at airspeeds between 27mph and 35mph. Anything slower, and its tiny, 12-horsepower engine cannot maintain lift. Faster, and its nose pitches uncontrollably.

Mr Bush is due to deliver what has been billed as a "major announcement" on space exploration, hoping to sweep aside a dismal few years for the once-proud American aviation and space industries, still reeling from by such disasters as the September 11 hijackings and this year's loss of the space shuttle Columbia.

Master of ceremonies for the event is to be John Travolta, the film star who is an airline-level pilot. The event will feature flypasts and appearances by Nasa astronauts, and by Brig-Gen Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the speed of sound, just 45 years after the Wright brothers took to the air.

That first flight was witnessed by just five local men, who had helped to pull the 600lb wood and muslin aircraft to a wooden launch track on Kill Devil Hills.

Orville won a toss of a coin for the right to be pilot from his brother Wilbur.

Organisers had planned to choose between two pilots, to decide whether today's honour would go to Prof Kochersberger, or Terry Queijo, an American Airlines pilot. But Ms Queijo was relegated to the supporting role of Wilbur Wright after crashing the replica Flyer during tests.

The Wright brothers, painfully shy bicycle makers from Ohio, did not only overcome astonishing technical obstacles to achieve their success. They also had to wait many years for widespread official recognition of their feat.