An important anniversary is coming up next year. I suspect only a relative few have actively considered its historical significance. How it affects us today. And what it will undoubtedly lead to tomorrow.
May 20, 2027, will mark 100 years since a skinny kid from the Midwest launched from a muddy dirt runway in Long Island headed for Paris, France. Every bit as risky a mission as the early astronauts faced, this one flight sparked a flurry of innovation and enterprise that resonates even now in the modern age.
There was prize money involved. The hefty sum of $25,000 was on the line balanced against the six lives already lost in the quest. The odds were long. The potential for failure was unavoidably obvious. Yet the human spirit was stronger.
For more than 33 hours a man piloted an inherently unstable machine, by hand, with minimal navigational equipment, across an ocean. From one continent to another. To prove that a new, highly suspect technology was ready to grow. To develop and mature into a product and service that could change the course of humanity forevermore.
Aviation did that, to be sure.
Prior to Charles Lindbergh’s pioneering inter-continental flight, the longest scheduled air service was operated by the U.S. Post Office between New York and California. A train could cover the distance in four days. Airplanes we would consider substandard today, operated by daring young men in harsh conditions, could make the delivery in as little as 33 hours — virtually the same time it took Lindbergh to cross an ocean.
An emergency landing or trusting a parachute to carry them to terra firma was at least a possibility for the airmail pilots. No such luck for Slim Lindbergh. It was total success or total failure on his bet. And failure meant certain death as it had for those who came before him.
This anniversary is of importance. Not just to us. Also, to those who come in the century ahead. This is more than the celebration of one momentous flight. It is even more significant than the historical fact that Lindbergh’s success ignited a flurry of funding and experimentation that has led aviation to loftier heights than most imagined possible.
No, the real celebration is this: We’ve just experienced the best 100 years aviation will ever give to human beings. It was in this century we improved on the science and technology to the point heavier than air flight is not only practical, it is both effective and efficient. It’s safer than our predecessors ever dreamed it could be.
And, best of all, this was the century when human beings had the chance to fly the aircraft themselves, by hand, as Lindbergh did.
Our hands and feet manipulated the controls. Our thoughts determined the next course of action. All tasks that will one day soon be primarily performed by computers driving entirely automated systems.
We had the great gift of being able to do more than simply manage the systems. We flew the aircraft. Take a moment to process that. To revel in the realization that we who fly today, who flew in years past, will one day be revered as the pioneers who took the risks, managed the circumstances, and participated in turning aviation into something so profoundly transformative the human race can move across oceans as easily as our great-grandparents could hitch a horse to a wagon and ride into town.
We will populate the cosmos using technology pioneered by men and women who believed in forces unseen. People who put their lives on the line to prove an idea. To advance a technology. To provide evidence that tech has relevance in our time and beyond.
We are at the precipice of a technological leap so astounding most of the population of our planet hasn’t even realized it’s possible — yet it is upon us today. Right now. And it will proliferate across the globe like wildfire. Just as aviation did when Charles Lindbergh proved beyond the shadow of a doubt the impossible had merely appeared to be improbable until it was proven to be entirely practical.
“The flight is beyond all expectation,” Orville Wright was quoted as saying in the New York Times on May 23, 1927, about Lindbergh’s success. “It just goes to show that everything that has usefulness can be done and is worth working for.”
It is a remarkable thing that only 24 years after Orville and Wilbur flew 112 feet across the North Carolina sand, Charles Lindbergh crossed the entire ocean they faced. And just 42 years later Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon as Michael Collins awaited in orbit, his mission to give them a ride home to the Earth.
Progress is inevitable. As long as there are individuals who believe, who will risk their capital and their lives to advance the species through the technology available to us, it will happen.
As we celebrate the achievements of Charles Lindbergh next year, I hope at least some of us will notice the natural extension of his efforts to the autonomous vehicles flying to and fro around the world. These events are very much connected. And we, as well as our children and grandchildren, will benefit from them, as we have done thanks to those who came before us.
But maybe it’s also a good year to hand-prop a tube-and-fabric taildragger. To hoist ourselves into the cockpit where we can take the stick in our hand, place our feet on the rudder pedals, and advance the throttle. We are the last of the breed who personally steered the craft along the taxiways, onto the runway, and coaxed it into the air with deft movements of flight controls as the world fell away below us.
We are blessed. Yes, we truly are.
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