45-foot paper airplane glides over Arizona desert
The plane, dubbed Arturo’s Desert Eagle, was 45 feet long with a 24-foot wingspan and weighed in at a whopping 800 pounds.
It was built as part of the museum’s Giant Paper Airplane Project, designed to get kids psyched about aviation and engineering.
After a few false starts, the plane was towed into the sky above the Sonoran desert on Wednesday afternoon by a Sikorsky S58T helicopter.
Bit strange an aeronautical project for kids that produces a plane weighing 800 pounds. A decent hanglider has an area of about 1/3 to 1/2 of that paper aeroplane – yet weighs around 1/16 to 1/20th.
Seems a perverse way to teach children – unless it is on the foolishness of simply trying to scale up.