Almost all of us have ripped a notebook page and threw a paper airplane at our friends’ heads while eroding school desks. So how far have you been able to throw a paper airplane so far? Three friends Dillon Ruble, Garrett Jensen and Nathaniel Erickson, graduates of the Missouri University of Science and Technology, broke a record in this regard that many of us could not even imagine.
Three friends, who designed a paper airplane called Mach 5, managed to fly this plane exactly 88 meters. Therefore, they broke the previous record of 77 meters. Considering that most of us cannot fly a paper airplane more than 8-10 meters, you can guess that this record-breaking airplane will have a special story.
NASA’s hypersonic plane denounced for record-breaking paper plane
Mach 5 was designed with inspiration from NASA’s hypersonic aircraft X-43A. Moreover, Ruble, Jensen and Erickson used both aerodynamics and origami to keep the plane in the air to a record high, and spent months designing, building and testing prototypes. After all, although it was inspired by a hypersonic aircraft, Mach 5 did not have an engine to fly it.
We all know how far a paper airplane will fly is also about how you launch it. So the team created computer simulations and watched the test videos over and over in slow motion to determine the most accurate launch pattern. Deciding that the best material for a paper airplane is A4 paper, the engineers stated that they spent 500 hours on the project until the day they broke the record.
*NASA X-43A
What the team does may be vain work for some of us, and admirable work for others. However, we can say that the team did not do this as a hobby. Ruble and Jensen started working on paper airplanes when they were still in middle school, and Dillon Ruble is currently working as a systems engineer at Boeing. So, although the record seems like a hobby, it is possible to say that the team has a career in aviation.
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