Up, Up and Away : A Man-Made Reptile Has Been Given the Mechanics of Flight; How About People?

PAUL B. MACCREADY, head of the team that created and flew a mechanical pterodactyl (the Mesozoic flying reptile), has written to outline his ideas for a weekly newspaper column to be called “Tommy Asks.” It would feature an innocent, intelligent and curious 13-year-old boy, who each week would ask a provocative question--perhaps one too sensitive for the newspaper to explore--and the next week, the best answers from the public would be published.

To show the sort of thing MacCready wants to get into, he sends several questions that Tommy might ask.

--”Why is soccer so popular in other countries but baseball and football are more popular in the United States?”

--”I’ve met people who won’t lie (either by direct falsehood or evasion) about Santa Claus or anything else, and their kids seem to turn out OK (and able to trust their parents). Is it better to be truthful or to perpetuate myths about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the stork and the Easter Bunny?”

--”The pastor told me nature’s beautiful complexity is conclusive evidence of God’s design, while my scientist friend said the complexity is evidence of eons of evolutionary selection of random variations. Who’s right?”

--”Why hasn’t anyone concocted a non-sexist personal pronoun to substitute for the awkward he and she , his and hers , etc.?”

There have been numerous non-sexist pronouns suggested to substitute for his or her and the abhorrent his/her . I have several in my files of letters. However, no such invented pronoun will ever catch on. Listen and you will hear that the language has already provided a pronoun--the plural their . Will everyone put on their hat? It is the common usage.

I’ve often expressed here my answer to the truth question. No parents who want their children to trust them should ever lie to them--not even about the stork. As for the creation, I am convinced that our complex world was created by Random Chance. Soccer is not popular in the United States because it’s just a lot of guys running around kicking a ball. It has no beauty of design.

MacCready could hardly expect more opinionated answers than those.

But his questions did not include the one I think he is most competent to answer. “Traffic is getting worse every day. It will soon be impossible. What can we do?”

MacCready’s AeroVironment Inc., of Monrovia, has developed, with assistance from General Motors, an electric car called Impact. It has no transmission, differential, anti-pollution equipment or cooling system. It can accelerate from 0 to 60 m.p.h in eight seconds. GM believes it could be mass-produced. Its only drawback: Its present range is about 100 miles.

MacCready says the electric car will not by itself end the traffic problem. We must develop more sophisticated systems of rapid transit and use the telephone, fax, videofax and other communication instruments to avoid driving everywhere. In a few years, he says, we will see each other as we talk by video, as if we were both in the same room.

Putting myself in Tommy’s position, I might ask, “Why can’t people learn to fly?”

In this technological age, it isn’t too much to expect a man who can make a mechanical pterodactyl to develop a compact machine by which each person would be his own airplane. Of course, it would have to be powered by electricity or some other clean fuel, to avoid clogging the air with combustion gases.

I have already fantasized here (March 18) about the glories of individual flight, “each of us flying about every which way, going from one place to another.” As I pointed out, there would be some hazards, and the Air Vehicles Department would need some rules, perhaps requiring licensees to fly at designated altitudes, and controlling left turns and U-turns. Otherwise, collisions would be frequent, and our already overtaxed trauma system would become swamped with cracked skulls and broken limbs, as well as the litter caused by fallen machines.

Of course, new styles of attire would have to be designed for individual flight. But there was something chic about those flying togs that Amelia Earhart and other early fliers used to wear--the leather helmets, the goggles, the jackets and whipcord pants.

MacCready says, “Mankind has to achieve a comfortable accommodation with the flora, fauna and resources of this limited globe.” The time is short, and he isn’t sure we can do it.

We either do it or man will soon be extinct, and the sky may be filled again with pterodactyls.