From: jason@ab20.larc.nasa.gov (Jason Austin) Subject: Re: ENGINEERING INVOLVED Message-ID: Organization: NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 21:13:58 GMT In article mjg51721@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael James Gebis) writes: -> I have a feeling that the reason not much engineering is involved in the -> creation of kites is because the sport is still in its infantcy. I'm sure -> that the Wright brothers didn't do computer simulations, wind tunnel testing, -> or that such thing weren't done for many years. It was more efficient, -> time-wise, to simply experiment and find out what worked and what didn't. -> -> Of course, after a while, people wanted to push the envelope and eke out that -> last bit of performance. At this point, mathematical simulation became -> important. -> -> It's the same situation with modern day kites. It is cheaper, faster, and -> easier to simply make a bunch of kites and find out what works and what -> doesn't. In the future, however, when kite-design has been pushed and -> the limits are being reached, more and more engineering will be required to -> get better performance. -> -> Mike Gebis m-gebis@uiuc.edu I would say it is because research is expensive and unnecessary in this case. As long as it flies and looks good, it doesn't matter if there's a little energy loss. If you build a bad airplane, you can throw away millions of dollars and blow things up. If you build a bad kite, assuming a reasonable size kite, you're not going to hurt anyone, and you'll just have to go back home and fiddle with it some more. Now, using a computer as a conceptual design tool would be useful. It would let you figure out how much stuff and what proportions of stuff you need to build the thing. -- Jason C. Austin j.c.austin@larc.nasa.gov = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =