Flying:Dream and Reality（在线收听）

(Movie Toy Story: To infinity and beyond!)

Oh, to be free as a bird. It’s been the ¹⁾stuff of fantasy, and of reality. Sort of. ²⁾A self-contained flying man. This jet pack from the 1960s had barely enough fuel to fly 30 seconds. So the dream ³⁾languished for decades. Everyone agreed it was completely impractical, except Michael Moshier.

Michael Moshier: The pilot controls the ⁴⁾flaps with the right-hand ⁵⁾control stick.

Moshier, a former Navy-pilot-turned-entrepreneur, has spent the last 5 years of his life working in secret designing a tiny twin ⁶⁾blade strap on helicopter called The Solotrek.

He said he finally made his first cautious test flight only two feet up at first. But to Moshier, two feet up was like being in heaven.

Michael Moshier: It was ⁷⁾exhilarating beyond description. I will tell you that I didn’t sleep that night or for several nights thereafter. It was just a monumental experience.

With a little more work, he says, the machine will ⁸⁾zip around the treetops at 80mph, stabilized by computers. He can picture the army using it to get over ⁹⁾rugged ¹⁰⁾terrain, police on search and rescue missions, and if an occasional daredevil wants to beat traffic, well, Moshier believes a pilot who can walk and chew gum with minimal training should be able to get on the aircraft and fly it safely and suitably. There’s just this one ¹¹⁾nagging question, the machine will fly, but will the idea? True, Moshier has help from the Defense Department and from NASA, but won’t the machine be noisy or dangerous or hard to park?

Jeffrey Schroeder(NASA scientist): I think we can do it but it would be expensive. The challenge is to make it so that it has more of a mass appeal.

Perhaps we are only destined to dream of only flying without wings and never do it. On the other hand, Michael Moshier was two feet up.

¹²⁾ Supersonic Jet

A test launch of what Japanese scientists hope will be the next generation of supersonic jet has failed spectacularly, ¹³⁾spiraling in the sky and crashing onto the Australian desert. The super jet was a ¹⁴⁾scale model of the plane that would be able to fly as fast as the Concord, with twice the range and triple the capacity. But it ¹⁵⁾dodged back to earth shortly after takeoff. Scientists sponsored by Japan’s government funded national aerospace laboratory, spent the last 6 months preparing to test it. Despite the crash they said, they would continue to work on the project and plan another test. CE