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It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s a kite!
World record for Farthest kite flight It was broken by three flight engineers with a kite that flew a total distance of 289 feet 9 inches (88 m), roughly the length of an American football field.
They beat the previous record of 252 feet 7 inches (77 m) which was achieved in April 2022 by Threesome in South Korea. Before that, the record had not been broken for more than a decade.
“This really put things on the map and is a real proud moment for the family and friends,” said Dillon Ruble, a systems engineer at Boeing who is now the kite flying record holder. In release. “It’s a good relationship with space and thinking along the lines of designing and prototyping.”
Rubel worked alongside Garrett Jensen, a power engineer also at Boeing, and aerospace engineer Nathaniel Erickson. The trio are recent graduates who studied aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
The feat required months of effort, with the team spending nearly 500 hours studying origami and aerodynamics to create and test multiple prototypes. Engineers put their final design to the test on December 2, 2022, in Crown Point, Indiana, where the record was set on the third ruble throw.
“We hope this record stands for a long time — 290 feet (88 meters) is unreal,” Jensen said in the statement. “That means 14 to 15 feet (4.2 to 4.6 metres) over the furthest throw we’ve ever made. It took a lot of planning and a lot of skill to beat the previous record.
The team decided that its best chance of beating the world record would be through an aircraft design that focused on speed and minimizing drag, so that the plane could fly a great distance in a short period of time.
Collect inspiration from different Hypersonic aircraftvehicles that can fly at speeds exceeding five times the speed of sound (Mach 5), specifically NASA X-43AThe team came up with the winning design for the kite – which was later named the “Mach 5”.
“There are significant differences between kites and full-sized aircraft in terms of their complexity, but they both operate on the same basic principles,” Rubel said via email. “Some of the same design methodologies can be applied to both. One of these approaches was a trial-and-error design process. For example, we could theorize about a fold that we could change at our level, fold it, then throw it, and compare the distance to previous iterations to determine whether Change is useful.
To find the best technique when it came to kite throwing, the team ran numerous simulations and analyzed slow-motion videos of their previous throws.
“We found that the ideal angle is about 40 degrees off the ground. Once you aim at that height, you can throw as hard as you can. This gives us our best distance,” Jensen said in the statement. “It took simulations to figure that out. I didn’t think we could get useful data from simulations on a kite. “It turns out we can.”
Even in terms of paper, the team decided that A4 size (slightly longer than regular letter-sized paper) was best for handling and folding the winning plane. Thanks to carefully considered design choices, and careful attention to the numerous rules and guidelines set by the Guinness World Records team, the three were ready to break the record.
In its record flight, the plane remained in the air for about six seconds. Guinness World Record for a kite for flight duration Currently 29.2 seconds.
“The design goals for the airtime record will be very different from the low-drag version we designed for the longest distance record,” Rubel said via email. “Increasing its wingspan and reducing its aspect ratio will be the first steps in producing this type of aircraft.”
Aside from the kite, Rubel added that this tedious back-and-forth method of experimentation was a testament to the importance of rigorous prototyping in the real world.
Rubel and Jensen began their kite engineering careers when they were in middle school, participating in kite events held at Boeing. Rubel said he enjoyed bringing the newspaper to life and the hard work he had to put in to find ways to improve his designs. They were both also fans of origami when they were children.
The record-breaking team hopes their achievement will inspire other young and ambitious aerospace engineers to pursue their dreams.
For those looking to create their own kite design, this feat is not impossible, but it may take some time (and skill).
“Mach 5 flies best at high relative speed, but to achieve this condition, the aircraft must be launched in a specific manner,” Rubel said via email. “This technology, combined with the complexity of the aircraft, means that only the most experienced kite enthusiasts will succeed with the design.
“However, by starting with publicly available designs, anyone can hone their skills to throw kites further and higher than all their friends,” he added.
