The daring visionaries of crackpot aviation

摘要

In the bucouc hinterland north of san Diego, on a hillside shaded by eucalyptus and pine, Attila Melkuti pulls open the doors of a barn. Inside, light gleams off a strange and marvelous contraption he's been piecing together for the past seven years. He pushes his nearly finished creation into the sun: a curvaceous, cherry-red flying machine that looks like nothing so much as the unholy union of a UFO and a Corvette. "The idea came to me in a childhood dream," he says. "I believe it could transform aviation." Melkuti may be the only one who so believes. His vehicle relies on a propulsion system ― a ducted fan, essentially a propeller mounted inside a circular housing ― that has been tried many times by large and usually very successful aviation companies and that has failed completely in each case. But Melkuti, an enthusiastic and eminently likeable Yugoslavian immigrant, is dedicated to his vision. He is part of a long line of inventors and would-be pioneers who set their sights on the sky, on bringing aviation to the masses and somehow reinventing flight. Every accomplishment and advance in the field of aeronautics, they argue, began with a challenge, probably one most people thought was unconquerable. The Wright brothers were the first of the breed, and Burt Rutan ― with his many innovative aircraft designs as well as SpaceShipOne, the main vehicle in the world's first private manned space program ― is the most recent.