A kite designed by Boeing engineers breaks the world distance record

(CNN) It’s a bird… it’s a plane… a kite!

world record for Farthest kite flight It was broken by three flight engineers with a kite that flew a total 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 Trio in South Korea. Prior to that, the record had not been broken for over a decade.

“It really put things on the map and it really is a proud moment for family and friends,” said Dillon Rubel, a systems engineer at Boeing and now the kite record holder. in a statement. “It’s a good relationship with space and thinking along the lines of design and prototyping.”

Ruppel worked alongside Jarrett Jensen, a power engineer also with Boeing, and flight engineer Nathaniel Erickson. All three are recent graduates who studied aeronautical engineering and mechanical engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology.

The feat required months of effort, with the team putting in nearly 500 hours of origami and aerodynamics study to create and test prototypes. The engineers put their final design to the test on December 2, 2022, in Crown Point, Indiana, where the record-breaking third ruble throw was achieved.

“We hope that for a long time this record – 290 feet (88 meters), will remain unrealistic,” Jensen said in the statement. “That’s 14 to 15 feet (4.2 to 4.6 m) the farthest we’ve ever done it. It took a lot of planning and a lot of skill to beat the previous record.”

Kite Physics

The team decided that their best chance at beating the world record would be with an aircraft design that focused on speed and reduced drag, so that the aircraft could fly a great distance in a short amount of time.

Gather inspiration from different Jets that fly faster than the speed of soundvehicles that can fly five times faster than the speed of sound (Mach 5), specifically NASA X-43Athe team came up with the winning kite design—later named “Mach 5.”

“Full-size and kite planes have huge differences in 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 such approach was a trial-and-error design process. For example, we would theorize about a fold that we could change on our plane, fold it, throw it, and compare the distance with previous iterations to determine if the change is beneficial.” .

To find the best technique when it comes to throwing the kite, the team ran several simulations and analyzed slow-motion videos of their previous throws.

“We found that the optimal angle is about 40 degrees from the ground,” Jensen said in the statement. “Once you aim that high, you throw as hard as you can. That gives us the best distance.” “It took simulations to figure that out. I didn’t think we could get useful data from a simulation on a kite. It turns out we can.”

Even on paper, which the team decided was A4 (slightly longer than normal paper size) was best for juggling and folding into the winning plane. Through meticulously considered design choices, and meticulous attention to the many rules and guidelines set by the Guinness World Records team, all three are set to break a record.

In its record-breaking flight the plane was in the air for about six seconds. The Guinness World Record for a kite is the duration of the flight It is currently 29.2 seconds.

“The design goals for airtime recording will be very different from the low-drag version we built for the longest record distance,” Rubel said via email. “Increasing the wing length and reducing the aspect ratio will be the first steps in producing this type of aircraft.”

Kite aside, Rubel added that this tedious way of testing back and forth was a testament to the importance of rigorous prototyping in the real world.

From origami enthusiasts to aeronautical engineers

Rubel and Jensen began their kite engineering careers while in middle school, participating in kite events held at Boeing. Rubel said he enjoyed bringing the paper to life and the hard work he had to put into finding ways to improve his designs. Both of them were also fans of origami when they were kids.

The record-breaking team hopes their achievement will inspire young and other aspiring space engineers to pursue their dreams.

For those looking to create their own record-breaking kite design, this feat isn’t impossible, but it can take some time (and skill).

“The Mach 5 best flies at a high relative speed, but to fulfill this condition, the aircraft must be launched in a specific way,” Rubel said via email. This technology, combined with the complexity of the aircraft, means that only the most experienced kite enthusiasts will be successful with the design.

He added, “However, by starting with the designs that are publicly available, anyone can hone their skills to throw kites farther and higher than all their friends.”