Apr 18 1985
From The Space Library
The Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum received approximately $400,000 from the Johnson Wax Co., which was needed to construct a life-sized, remote-controlled model of a pterosaur, a flying dinosaur that existed in various forms for about 145 million years and became extinct about 60 million years ago, the Washington Post reported. The Smithsonian had announced the project the previous summer with the caveat that it would need corporate funding. "We always planned to do it," said museum deputy director Don Lopez, "but now we can be sure it will be built on the scale that we wanted." The Smithsonian asked Paul MacCready, a prize-winning aerodynamicist whose experiments with pedal- and solar-powered aircraft were known around the world and whose Gossamer Condor, a lightweight, pedal-powered plane, hung in the Air and Space Museum, to design and build the model. MacCready and a team of experts in paleontology, bird flight, and aerodynamics were experimenting in California with a small, glider version of the pterosaur. The Smithsonian expected the final version to weigh about 125 lb. and have a wingspan of 36 feet, roughly the size of a four-person airplane. MacCready would construct the model of graphite, carbon, and epoxy fibers.
The challenge, a Smithsonian spokesman said, was to design a computerized "brain" for the model to simulate the slight, constant wing movement that researchers believed the pterosaur used to maintain its balance. (W Post, Apr 18/85, D2)
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