![]() Now he'd have to burn up his body energy at the rate of one kilowatt for four hours running. They did extensive testing of 24 men and one woman and finally gave the nod to a Greek bicycle champion, Kanellos Kanellopoulos. The team carefully studied anatomy and metabolism. The most serious problem was human endurance. And a wild machine it was! It gave a whole new meaning to the word "spindly." It's wingspan outreached the Boeing 727's, but it weighed only 70 pounds. They built an airplane, not of wax and feathers, but of carbon-fiber composites and plastics. But even that was over three times the existing world record for human-powered flight. They set out to fly from Crete - not to Sicily, 500 miles away - but to the island of Santorini, 74 miles north of Crete. In 1985 a team of engineers from MIT set themselves a more modest objective, but a fearsome one nevertheless. Rockets have carried us free of the earth but no one's come close to duplicating Daedalus's flight under his own power. In some versions, Icarus flies too high - too close to the sun. He and Icarus used the wings to fly to Sicily and to freedom. ![]() When he offended Minos, the King of Crete, Minos threw him and Icarus into prison. Daedalus was a mythical Greek architect and sculptor. The myth of Daedalus and his son Icarus also lays its strong hand on our elemental craving to fly. Why are the lines from The Wizard of Oz so compelling: The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. Today, we mix a magic drink for Daedalus and Icarus.
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