Pilots, "Flyboys," and Astronauts

 

Dreams of flight are as old as humankind itself. Greek mythology tells of a master craftsman named Daedalus who built wings made of feathers and wax for his son Icarus who, ignoring his father's warnings, flew too close to the sun and perished when his wings melted. By the time of the Renaissance, these daydreams were being transformed into practical, though still unachievable, designs.

 

French brothers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier constructed the first workable lighter-than-air craft using a paper-lined linen bag and in June 1783, gave their first public demonstration, as their balloon rose to an altitude of 6,000 feet (1,829 meters). By November, men had become passengers and ballooning quickly became a popular sport. Human flight had entered the public consciousness.

 

The first controlled powered flight of the Wright brothers on December 17, 1903, ushered in a new era of public awareness of flight, and of those that were brave enough to fly. Within a decade after the events at Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina, a majority of Americans could immediately recognize the Wrights and their Flyer, even though few had ever seen an actual airplane in flight. Magazines and newspapers were filled with engravings and photographs of the Wrights and their distinctive biplane, while images of the Flyer appeared everywhere—on kites, calendars, cookbooks, and advertisements.

 

Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont, the son of a wealthy coffee planter, achieved similar popularity in Europe for his early demonstrations of flight. Inspired by the clouds floating freely in the skies of his native Brazil, Santos-Dumont moved to Paris in 1897 and began experimenting with small airships he designed himself, endearing himself to Parisian society by tethering his small dirigibles to street lamps while attending the opera or visiting friends. Santos-Dumont's public exhibitions, such as his dirigible flights around the Eiffel Tower, made him a folk hero among the masses in the early 1900s.

 

Following a 1904 visit to the St. Louis Exposition where he met Octave Chanute, the Wright brothers' "mentor" and learned about the Wrights' first successful flights, Santos-Dumont returned to France, where he constructed his first airplane in 1906, the 14 bis, which made the first powered flight in Europe. Since most of the Continent was not yet aware of the Wrights' pioneering 1903 flight, Santos-Dumont was widely credited at the time as the "inventor of the airplane" and, as recently as 1991, was declared the "Father of Aviation" by Brazilian government decree where he remains a national hero.

 

World War I and the exploits of aerial combatants such as American Eddie Rickenbacker and Germany's Baron Manfred von Richthofen—the famed "Red Baron"—further cemented the images of daring pilots and their flying machines into popular culture. A 1927 silent film titled Wings, about two World War I "flyboys" both in love with the same girl, was awarded the first Academy Award for Best Picture. Starring Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, and Gary Cooper, Wings featured spectacular dogfight footage and both male lead actors flew their own airplanes, adding Hollywood's stamp of approval to the daring image of aviators.

 

Human flight, although exciting and often dangerous, was still perceived as the stuff of daredevils and adventurers—not for the average person—that is, until May 21, 1927. Charles Lindbergh's epochal transatlantic solo flight forever transformed the public's perception of aviation. The intense media interest in the historic crossing, followed by newsreel and radio coverage of the jubilant public celebrations following the aviator's arrival in Paris, transformed Lindbergh into an instant celebrity - the most recognizable man on Earth - within days of his flight.

 

Lindbergh's impact on the aviation industry was just as dramatic. Orders for new aircraft—placed by businesses and private individuals alike—materialized almost overnight, and manufacturers quickly sprang up to meet the sudden demand. Thousands of ordinary citizens signed up for flying lessons, dance instructors taught the steps to the "Lindy," air races became a popular spectator sport, and passenger airlines expanded their services—all fueled by the so-called "Lindbergh Boom."

 

Aviatrix Amelia Earhart's numerous record-setting flights, including the first solo flight from Hawaii to California, and as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, further popularized aviation. Earhart's reputation as an aviation pioneer was assured, albeit tragically, after her mysterious disappearance during a highly publicized around-the-world flight attempt in 1937. Her 1932 book, The Fun of It, written shortly after her first transatlantic flight, describes her childhood and the realization that she preferred flying airplanes to almost any other activity. It urged young women to test their own limits and tackle new challenges "just for the fun of it."

 

To the average citizen, this "Golden Age of Aviation" was remembered as a time of individual accomplishments by daring personalities with still widely recognized names, Wiley Post, Roscoe Turner, Jimmy Doolittle and Howard Hughes among them, individuals whose imagination, audacity, and raw talent transformed aviation from a stunt-flying curiosity to one of the cornerstones of American industry.

The increased popularity and acceptance of flight and those that flew was soon reflected in American popular culture. Pilots and airplanes replaced cowboys and horses as movie serials, radio shows, and comic books were filled with the exploits of Flash Gordon, Steve Canyon, and Terry and the Pirates. The futuristic dreams of space travel were popularized by the adventures of "Buck Rogers," expanding the nation's collective vocabulary to include terms such as "rocket ships," "robots" and "ray guns."

 

From the early 1950s, television also glorified pilots and "spacemen" and produced a disproportionate number of space-themed shows. Captain Video, Tom Corbett, Space Patrol, Men into Space, and Buck Rogers (again) all acquainted a receptive public with space travel. Walt Disney even gave tourists a chance to go into space themselves with his "Rocket to the Moon" ride, the centerpiece of Tomorrowland in Disney's brand-new Anaheim, California, theme park, Disneyland.

 

The launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, shifted attention away from the exploits of daring pilots to the new breed of daredevils—astronauts and cosmonauts—and the powerful machines they rode into space. The successful flight of the first human in space on April 12, 1961, Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin of the Soviet Union, was quickly exploited by Soviet media, which labeled the 27-year-old as the "Columbus of the Cosmos." Gagarin's single orbit of the Earth made him an international hero of epic proportions—the Lindbergh of his generation—his face appearing on countless photographs, posters, and postage stamps the world over. Like Lindbergh, Gagarin's became the most recognizable face on the planet and his image flooded Soviet society, sculpted in stone, cast into bronze, plastered on billboards, and he served as a role model to Soviet youth.

 

The United States' selection of its first astronauts, the "Mercury 7," in April 1959, sparked the public's imagination once more, and the group received media coverage to an extent unseen since Lindbergh's 1927 flight. Portraits of the astronauts appeared almost weekly on the covers of major news magazines, due largely to an exclusive contract with Life magazine to profile the personal stories of the astronauts and their families, and best-selling books on spaceflight appeared almost overnight.

 

The "space race" of the 1960s between the United States and the Soviet Union and the personalities that have emerged have had a lasting impact on the leaders of today. Countless scientists, doctors, pilots, engineers, and future astronauts were motivated to study mathematics, science, and engineering after watching the early flights of Gagarin, Alan Shepard, and John Glenn, often assisted by generous government-backed scholarships and loans. American astronauts Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and Colonel Eileen M. Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, have inspired young women to pursue "non-traditional" careers as aviators and scientists, in a manner similar to Amelia Earhart's influence on earlier generations.

 

A best-selling 1979 book by Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (later made into a 1984 motion picture of the same name) reintroduced the public to the excitement and danger of aviation and early spaceflight, colorfully depicting the astronauts and U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager and his successful flight in the Glamorous Glennis, a Bell X-1, that first broke the sound barrier in 1947 and the exploits of the "Mercury 7." A new generation of space enthusiasts has been thrilled by Disney and Pixar's Buzz Lightyear of Star Command—the "galaxy's best space ranger"—a character inspired byApollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin.

 

The 1986 movie Top Gun not only rocketed actor Tom Cruise to fame but also helped bring the U.S. Navy's elite flying school to the public's attention. The popularity of other movies and television shows, such as the 1995 Academy Award-winning motion picture Apollo 13 (based on astronaut James Lovell's book Lost Moon) and the Emmy-award television mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon," only continue to confirm that aviation and spaceflight and those that travel on these missions, whether fact or fiction, still excite and inspire those who dream of flight.

 

—Roger Guillemette

 

Sources:

 

Boyne, Walter J. The Leading Edge. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1986.

Lovell, James. Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

McCurdy, Howard E. Space and the American Imagination. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.

Pattillo, Donald M. A History in the Making: 80 Turbulent Years in the American General Aviation Industry. New York: McGraw Hill, 1998.

Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1979.

 

Online sources:

 

"Alberto Santos-Dumont." Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies. http://educate.si.edu/scitech/impacto/graphic/aviation/alberto.html

Markstein, Donald D. Toonopedia http://www.toonopedia.com

National Aeronautics and Space Administration."Astronaut Biographies." http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/

Wade, Mark. Encyclopedia Astronautica. "Cosmonaut Biographies." http://www.astronautix.com/astros/cosgroup.htm

"To Fly is Everything..." A Virtual Museum covering the Invention of the Airplane. Inventors Gallery." Mississippi State University. http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/air_main.shtml

 

Educational Organization	Standard Designation (where applicable)	Content of Standard
International Technology Education Association	Standard 4	Students will develop an understanding of the cultural, social, economic, and political effects of technology.
International Technology Education Association	Standard 6	Students will develop an understanding of the role of society in the development and use of technology.
International Technology Education Association	Standard 7	Students will develop an understanding of the influence of technology on history.