1st Annual Honorary Dr. Paul B. MacCready Lecture: From Solar Challenger to HALE Aircraft, Doing More With Much Less
Ray Morgan will speak to his experience working for Dr. Paul MacCready to turn his dream of solar powered aircraft into reality – first as a piloted demonstration aircraft, flying from Paris, France to Kent, England in 1981, and then on to more practical, unmanned versions suitable as high altitude platforms (approaching 100,000 ft MSL) for atmospheric research and, potentially, “stratospheric satellites”, capable of years-long flight. Ray’s talk will elucidate critical technologies and parameters as well as operational limitations on such vehicles. He will also illustrate how Paul’s philosophy of “Doing More with Much Less” and some of his surprising, yet unspoken, guidelines (e.g., “If it is worth doing, it is worth doing poorly”), enabled the efficient and rapid development of working prototypes for over 50 unique vehicles, from flying dinosaur replicas to solar and battery powered cars and hand-launched electric reconnaissance UAV’s for the US Military.