Flight

This is the Aviation monument on the Kiseleff Avenue, that bares only two simple words: „Eroilor aerului" (To the heroes of the air).

As a coincidence, today, as the whole world thinks of flying because of the 40th anniversary of the first man's step on the Moon, we also celebrate the Aviation Day. It's Saint Ilie's (Eli's) Day, the patron of storms and of the daring flying people. It's supposed to be a stormy day, with thunders and all, but today it was not. There were celebrations all over the week-end, demonstrative flights, and people were invited to see and even try aircraft, helicopters were brought to Herastrau Park and the big planes could be visited at the Otopeni base. Unfortunately, I could do nothing of all these, but I am bringing my humble homage to the heroes of the air here and all over the world by mentioning our most important names in this adventure of the humanity.

Traian Vuia was a Romanian inventor, who designed, built and flew the first self-propelling heavier-than-air aircraft in Europe, in 1906. The possibility of such unaided heavier-than-air flight was heavily contested by the French Academy of Sciences, which declined to assist Vuia with funding, rejecting his project for being utopian, with the comment:

"The problem of flight with a machine which weighs more than air can not be solved and it is only a chimera."

He encountered many difficulties, the most important being of financial nature, but he succeeded in overcoming them.
The thing that has been emphasized ever since about Vuia's achievement, is that his machine was able to take off on a flat surface "only by on-board means", without any "outside assistance", be it an incline, rails, a catapult, etc. However there was, and is, much disagreement over precise definition of the "first" airplane.

Aurel Vlaicu was a second important inventor and pilot, who built three original, arrow-shaped airplanes, with flight controls in front and two coaxial propellers, starting in 1909. Unfortunately, he died in 1913 near Câmpina, a town on the way to Sinaia, while attempting to fly over the Carpathian Mountains in his second airplane.

Maybe the best known name in our aviation history is Henri Coanda, aerodynamics pioneer and the builder of world's first jet powered aircraft, the Coanda-1910. He discovered and gave his name to the Coanda effect, as well as a few other inventions. This effect has been used in many aeronautical inventions and is crucial to successful supersonic flight. Bucharest's international airport in Otopeni is named after him, while the smaller one in Baneasa has Vlaicu's name.

"These airplanes we have today are no more than a perfection of a child's toy made of paper. In my opinion, we should search for a completely different flying machine, based on other flying principles. I imagine a future aircraft, which will take off vertically, fly as usual, and land vertically. This flying machine should have no moving parts. This idea came from the huge power of cyclones." H. Coanda

And I have to mention the only Romanian astronaut, Dumitru Prunariu, who flew for almost 8 days with the Soiuz 40 mission. The only one…so far…