MIT smites competitors in airplane contest

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>So this past weekend, fifty teams of aerospace engineers went to Tuscon, AZ, to compete in the AIAA</a> Design/Build/Fly competition. The teams have been working since the beginning of the school year to design an aircraft which could complete this year's contest missions.</p>

<p>MIT's team, led by none other than my fabulous fiance, came in first place -- their final score was 263, and their next competitor's score was 111. They actually designed their plane so well that they only had to complete one of the two aerial missions to win.</p>

<p>The guys are super-psyched -- they entered for the first time last year without really understanding that they needed to use strategy rather than just designing a workhorse plane, and came in 11th. This year, they had a better understanding of the sort of design needed to win; they designed a small, ultra-light, not-easily-flyable plane, did what they needed to do, and smoked the competition.</p>

<p>So yay MIT!</p>

<p>And some pictures of the guys and their plane (named Fudgie the Whale) are [url=<a href="http://web.mit.edu/ajw61185/Public/DBF07/%5Dhere%5B/url"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/ajw61185/Public/DBF07/]here[/url&lt;/a&gt;].&lt;/p>

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<p>YES!!!!!!!</p>

<p>yes. :FISTPUMP:</p>

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<p>Mollie, stop showing off your boyfriend .... ;)</p>

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<p>Hey, he's almost my husband. :D</p>

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<p>holy crap he's smiling</p>

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<p>Right on! That's fabulous news, thanks for sharing it!!</p>

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<p>Yeah those course 16 people are purty smart :P</p>

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<p>Congratulations !!! Thanks for sharing such great news.</p>

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<p>Course 16 rocks!</p>

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<p>Mollie, Thanks for sharing. It is beautifully done and I am downloading it to show it to my students in design class.</p>

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<p>Congrats! That's fabulous.</p>

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<p>lol what the hell is it...its so strange looking</p>

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<p>Haha, don't tell him that! He claims that it's beautiful. (I agree with you -- it's pretty weird-looking.)</p>

<p>Basically, the rules this year favored light planes with small wingspans, because planes were assigned a sort of handicap score, and light planes with small wingspans got a better score. Their plane weighed just under 2 pounds, and the nearest competitor's plane weighed 5 pounds, so the MIT team was already very much ahead even before flying.</p>

<p>If anybody's interested in this sort of thing, their design report is [url=<a href="http://mit.edu/ajw61185/Public/DBF07/MIT%2520OBOSU%2520report.pdf%5Dhere%5B/url"&gt;http://mit.edu/ajw61185/Public/DBF07/MIT%2520OBOSU%2520report.pdf]here[/url&lt;/a&gt;] (it's a very big PDF, beware).</p>

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<p>thanx a lot Mollie, for the wonderful design report. :)</p>

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<p>Hahaha, I totally love how Adam was on all three teams (manufacturing, design, analysis). I don't know why but that's exactly what I'd have guessed. :p</p>