The Wright Experience Team rolls out a replica of the original Wright Brothers plane on December 16, 2003 as part of a "dress rehearsal" for the actual re-enactment of the original Wright Brothers flight that will take place December 17, 2003. The re-enactment of the original December 17, 1903 Wright Brothers flight will be the culmination of the weeklong First Flight Centennial Celebration that is taking place at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. REUTERS/Ellen Ozier
KITTY HAWK, N.C., Dec 16 (Reuters) - The world was fairly warned of the peaks and perils of human flight by the daring mythical adventure of Daedalus and Icarus, the father and son who flew to freedom on wings of feathers and wax.
Daedalus survived his first flight, while Icarus, overcome by the joy of flying, ignored his father's admonitions, flew too close to the sun and perished after the wax melted. Orville and Wilbur Wright's historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on Dec. 17, 1903, in an airplane fashioned from wood, wire and cloth, realized the age-old dream of human flight and transformed the 20th-century world.
And for all its profoundly positive impacts, human flight unleashed unforeseen and unintended miseries. The birth of aviation ended geographic isolation. It was the foundation for some of the greatest achievements of the last 100 years, as airplanes bridged oceans at supersonic speed and rockets carried astronauts to the moon.
It also transformed warfare, giving people new and more efficient ways to kill each other. "At our core, we humans are explorers. In the last 100 years, we have ... become the dominant species in the air," said Peter Diamandis, an aerospace entrepreneur and a founder of the International Space University, hailing the Wrights' achievement as a milestone in human evolution.
"We will always find new and novel ways to kill ourselves," he added. "Every invention has a positive and negative." Airplanes helped create the huge global tourist industry. They provided a speedy way for disease to spread and a new weapon for terrorists.
FEAR OF FLYING
They bottled some of the greatest human fears, of heights, of falling, of enclosed spaces -- a mix that is fear of flying.
Those who have it might step easily into a car, where tens of thousands of people die each year, but be terrified by the prospect of travel by plane, reputed to be the safest mode of transport.
Planes were used in some of the century's worst disasters. The B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6. 1945. Days later, another fell on Nagasaki. Together they killed more than 200,000 people. Airplanes spared warriors personal contact, allowing them to kill with efficiency from thousands of feet (meters) up. "You have (bomber) pilots who never see the effects what they do. They never know the civilians on the ground that they killed," said Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action, one of the largest U.S. anti-war groups. "That certainly has a dehumanizing effect on the pilots."
In the United States, the birthplace of human flight, aircraft were used for the two attacks seared into the consciousness of every American -- the Dec. 7, 1941, assault by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Airplanes have allowed doctors to take medicine and healing to the ends of the Earth. But they have also allowed disease to hop a quick ride to a new place.
Researchers have identified a promiscuous airline flight attendant as "Patient Zero," a key carrier in the early days of AIDS, a disease blamed for more than 20 million deaths. SARS moved within days from Hong Kong to Singapore and on to Toronto on airplanes. In some cases, SARS was transmitted between passengers on airplanes.
"Disease spread before the airplane. But it's happening now with a much more rapid spread and that's making it more difficult to contain," said Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the communicable disease section of the World Health Organization.
Autor: Reuters - By Jim Loney
