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Right Stuff Research Papers

Decent Essays

I believe the "Right Stuff" is a mix of courage, perseverance, ingenuity, passion for what is being done, and resilience. It takes courage to use ingenuity to go against the tide. It takes passion to use courage to persevere and continue through the toughest of times. And it takes resilience to be able to take many failures and persevere to eventually succeed. I believe that one of the people we should nominate for having the "Right Stuff" is Samuel Pierpont Langley. He had a passion for flight ever he created the Astrophysical Observatory at the Smithsonian. He began by rigorously studying birds in flight, just like the Wright Brothers did at about the same time. He had the courage to accept $50,000 in their …show more content…

It might have succeeded in achieving its goal, it still didn't have the "right stuff". The prize we should award is a medal with a bird on it. An essential thing for a plane to fly anywhere except windy places is a system of flaps (or High Lift Devices). They are a simple version of thrust vectoring, which basically is how gasses are moved in a certain direction to move something in a certain direction. As flaps, they move air down and back, providing lift and a small amount of thrust. Another problem with the Flyer is that only the wings are covered by fabric. The wooden posts on the outside succumb to vortex shedding. That is when air hits any cylindrical object and forms vortexes of spinning air behind it. That causes violent, uncontrollable swaying, which can cause a plane to spiral out of control and become unable to be recovered. The final flaw was that it had a forward elevator. Had the elevator been positioned at the back, it would be easier to control and would let the plane climb higher without stalling. This would be of more use to the military, and might even have saved Selfridge, the highest ranking official with such a great knowledge of aeronautics at the time, had it been added. That would get them the contract, and all of their hard work would pay

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