But there were destinations less accessible than other continents and their capitals of these, the most seductive were the North and South poles. You could always go from New York to Paris, or at least Le Havre, France, in a ship, so the airplane changed only the time it took. When fuel fraction had grown to the limits of current technology, aerodynamic improvements-drag reduction and wings of higher aspect ratio-opened a new but narrow avenue to further progress.ĭistance presented itself in different ways, depending on the destination. “Fuel fraction,” the share of an airplane’s takeoff weight that is usable fuel, is a fundamental determinant of range. As reliability improved, the central problem was to get airborne with huge loads of fuel. Early HurdlesĪt first, the technical challenge of long-distance flying boiled down to the reliability of engines. Besides prize money, there was always the motive of acquiring at least temporary fame, and besides that, there was the lure of faraway places with strange-sounding names. Cash prizes-big ones-were offered and won for crossing the Atlantic or flying nonstop from New York to Paris or from London to Sydney, and newspapers lavished headlines on every attempt. Distance especially spoke to the public imagination, perhaps because it was the aspect of air travel that presented the most intuitively accessible contrasts with the pre-aviation world. Pilots regularly toppled and replaced milestones of altitude, speed and distance during the early years of aviation, particularly during the period between the two world wars.

80 days north pole guide