Wright Brothers first flight "re-creation": WHO THE HELL CARES????

The BBQ Pit
1

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20031217/D7VGAJ200.html

This has got to be the biggest waste of time I have ever heard, and I cannot believe that the lead news story on radio broadcasts this afternoon was whether or not these nimrods could actually get this bucket of bolts off the ground.

My question: WHO CARES??? If we want to prove that we can fly . . . we have these things called . .
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JET AIRPLANES??? SPACECRAFT???

I mean really, don’t these people and the 35,000 idiots sitting in a pouring rainstorm have anything BETTER to do?

Instead of spending countless hours re-creating the Wright Brothers aircraft . . why can’t these obviously bright people who built this craft invent something useful to mankind?

And as for the 35,000 people in attendance . . . jobs? Do any of them have jobs? What are they doing sitting there all afternoon on a Wednesday?

Proof, once again, that in America was have too much free time.

Want to honor the Wright Brothers and their great accomplishment that changed the fate of mankind? Fireworks are nice. Speeches are okay.

This, to me, is a waste of everyone’s time.

2

Hell, this isn’t even the first time someone recreated the Wright Brothers’ plane! PBS filmed one such recreation for their “Kitty Hawk” documentary, that one even had a refurbished Wright engine. Unfortunately, it crashed on its (accidental) maiden flight. Sounded like it could be fixed though so it’s possible that the one today was the same plane.

3

Kind of like this rant. Tell us something, do you celebrate your birthday, or do you consider that a waste of time as well? Lets not forget the September 11th memorials, wow that just sucks up otherwise productive time.

Humans like to remember milestones, especially big ones. That is why people celebrate their birthdays every year, and it is why we remember things like 9/11. I’m sure that you do realize that this was the 100th anniversary of the first flight. The fact that flight was one of the driving forces of change in the 20th century and is more than worthy of being remembered.

Sorry for wasting your time.

4

Meekly raises hand.

Me. I care. I think it would have been pretty cool (had it worked). If I was anywhere near that area of the US, I would have been there today to see it.

So there!

5

Did you watch it? No? Then it didn’t waste your time, did it? The people who watched it or read about it or whatever obviously wanted to. Whose time did it waste?

Now, all the dumb articles and shows about starlets and their current love affairs or what shoes they buy or whatever, THAT’s a waste of time.

6

I care. I think it amazing and humorous that, considering how advanced airplanes have become, this little rinky-dink prehistoric plane is kicking everybody’s ass.

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Actually, Americans work more than most industrialized nations in the world today. If they want to take an afternoon off to watch an attempted flight - I say let’s let them.

8

St Anger do you engage in any leisure activities at all?

If so, write a brief essay on precisely how those activities are any less pointless than recreating early flight.

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Well dude, it was 100 years ago, and aviation is one of mankind’s finest achievements. My father was a retired airline pilot who made a shitload of money from this industry.

It also reminds us how quick technology is, and can be. In your rant, you spoke about jets and spacecraft. It only took mankind about 20 more years to shuttle paying passengers in airplanes, about another 20 years to do in a jet, and 63 years to put a man on the moon (which really is not aviation, but rocketry). The Space Shuttle is more aviation based.

I suspect most of the 35,000 were either school children on field trips, old airplane buffs like my father, or people just wanting to take the day off. Got to love the name is the place “Kill Devil Hills”.

I still say the greatest invention of the 20th Century is a tie between computers and the airconditioner, but that’s just me.

ET

10

Including, of course, you, taking time out from whatever to tell all us poor saps how not to spend our time. I think I’ll quote an Internet legend:

Couldn’t you have been personally feeding the hungry instead of posting?

11

Instead of just a recreation, it could have been a spectacle. When everybody’s watching the Wright plane lumber off the hill, an F-22 should come screaming in from behind at full afterburner just to show how far we’ve gone.

And then a space shuttle can land right in front of the crowd, and Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong can wave to everybody while a parade for the inanimate carbon rod winds its way across the city.

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Who the fuck do you know who has too much free time? Most Americans I know are constantly busy working. Two weeks vacation is standard in this country. And for many they never get that much. And those that do seldom get it for the first year or two of employment.

Free time? We don’t get enough of it. Too much? You are out of your freaking mind.

What a pathetic piece of shit rant this was.

13

Actually, St Anger you dolt, the flyer was made of spruce and ash covered with muslin fabric. So don’t call the Flyer, truly a testament to the ingenuity of Man, a “bucket of bolts.”
You are offensive. Actually, your little screed at the top of this thread might possibly be the most disgusting thing I have ever read. How can you be a member of this board and even think that the first powered, controlled flight is not worth even a thought? Are you out of your mind?

14

That was on PBS tonight, and it was a great show. They said they would have to rebuild the plane, so I wonder what progress they’ve made. The article didn’t mention any earlier mishap, so I’m thinking maybe it’s not the same people as the ones in the PBS show.

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I care. I care partly because I love old machines, but also because I have a very bright nine-year-old son who watched it on TV with great anticipation, and who was disappointed when the plane failed to take off. We had a good discussion about Flyer 1, and about how we now know that it could just barely fly. And that led to a discussion about how the Wright Brothers did fly it - because they learned from their own and others’ mistakes, and because they kept their eyes on the goal and kept trying. This strikes me as a useful lesson in today’s world.

Then flodjunior told me that one of his friends decided “just today” that he wanted to be a pilot, but he had decided he wanted to be an engineer and design planes that burn less fuel “and take off vertically so you don’t get smashed back into your seat during take-off”. I don’t believe for a minute that either of these boys will still have these same dreams a year from now, but they and many other kids have seen and perhaps started to think about just a few more of the possibilities that are open to them if they work hard and keep dreaming.

In other words, the recreation of that first airplane flight was not meant for you. If you can’t understand that, then that would be your fucking problem.

16

Contributing nothing to this thread, I’ll just point out that I agree, I didn’t care. I did, however, enjoy the quip in the (NYTimes? WashPost? CNN maybe?!)… wherever it was about how, 100 years later, everyone has to change planes in Atlanta.

17

I think commemerating the pioneers of flight is marvelous, i’m tempted to start a thread titled ‘This lame Rant: WHO THE HELL CARES?’ Aside from thinking you are a moron ‘with too much time on your hands’ did anyone see the Scrapheap Challenge (AKA Junkyard Wars) with the three teams building airplanes using materials and equipment that were available to the Wright brothers? It was really cool, it had three teams (French, U.S and U.K) who competed to build a plane in three days. They all succeeded and all of them flew beautifully - the planes looked excellent btw - and the Brits triumphed, all in all a fascinating show. I assume it was shown in the states because it had the U.S presenters on it.

18

It’s not often I see a rant in the Pit totally flare up in the author’s face. But this one’s a goody.

This thread reminds me of a thread about a year ago when Lance Armstrong won his 4th Tour de France and some fool started a thread asking “Who the fuck cares about some idiot who can ride a bike? Give me NFL. That’s a real sport…”

The author of that thread never returned either… and geez he got roasted. Big time.

19

Well, I care. But then, I’m biased. I’m a pilot.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the day off work so I was stuck in Chicago at my desk. :frowning:

Ahem. You forgot the piston-engine fixed wing, helicoptors, blimps, ballons, vectored thrust…

Like what? Who the fuck are you to dictate to others what they should do with their time? Maybe YOU should do something other than annoy people on message boards, hmm?

Actually, from what I know of the recreators, they’re folks like aerospace engineers and airline pilots, so yes, on the job, they do in fact do useful things. Anyhow, it’s not like they’re spending YOUR money to do this, so what the fuck do you care? How is this re-enactment hurting you?

Besides which, don’t the folks who sell gas and food and supply porta-potties to these functions deserve to make a living, too?

And, uh, right, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, John Glenn, and Chuck Yeager never did anything useful, important, or notable in life so why the hell were they there? And how about the loser, George W Bush?

Probably using their valuable vacation time. Tell me, you do understand the concept of “time off”, yes? or do you work 12 hours a day 7 days a week?

Proof, once again, there are too many people in this world too concerned with what other people are doing.

Oh, but wait! Fireworks explode! They’re dangerous! We can’t be exposing people to that! [/sarcasm]

Then I am soooooooooo glad you are not in charge of MY time!

20

What a really dumb rant; if you don’t find it interesting, look at something else, use the time more profitably to pick the lint out of your navel or something. Clearly lots of people DO care.

Meh.

“I don’t like X, why do people like X?; people who like X are stupid”

Not everyone is exactly like you.