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45-Foot-Long Paper Airplane Needed a Helicopter to be Launched
March 25th, 2012
What’s the biggest paper airplane you’ve launched? I’ve noticed that they tend to get a bit flabby when you use bigger sheets of paper, but that didn’t stop the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, from trying to fly a 45-foot-long paper airplane.
A helicopter was used to lift and then launch this jumbo paper airplane that had a 24-foot wingspan and weighed 800 pounds. It was part of the Great Paper Airplane Project and it successfully completed its maiden flight. It hit a top speed of 98 mph at an altitude of 2,703 feet.
Aeronautical engineers were inspired by the design of a 12-year old Arturo Valdenegro’s paper airplane, which beat hundreds of others in a regional paper airplane distance contest.
Unfortunately, here’s what it looked like after it landed:
[via Ubergizmo]
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