Introduction to the Record-Breaking Paper Plane
It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s a paper plane! The world record for the farthest flight with a paper plane was broken by three aviation and space engineers with a paper plane that flew a total of 289 feet, 9 inches (88 meters), almost the length of an American soccer field.
The Record-Breaking Team
They defeated the previous record of 252 feet, 77 meters (77 meters), which were reached on April 2022 by a trio in South Korea. Previously, the record had not been broken for over a decade. The team consisted of Dillon Ruble, a system engineer at Boeing, Garrett Jensen, a strength engineer, and Nathaniel Erickson, an air and space engineer. The trio are the youngest graduates examined at the Missouri University of Science and Technology Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical engineering studio.
The Design Process
The performance required months of effort, since the team examined origami and aerodynamics for almost 500 hours to create and test several prototypes. The engineers put their final design on December 2, 2022, in Crown Point, Indiana, on the rehearsal, where the record was reached by Ruble. The team had decided that the best chance of beating the world record would be with an aircraft design that focused on speed and minimized air resistance so that the aircraft can fly a widespread distance in a short time.
Inspiration and Design
Inspiration from different hypersonic aircraft, vehicles that can fly faster than five times the speed of sound, especially the NASA X-43A, helped the team develop the winning paper aircraft design – later called "Mach 5". The team carried out various simulations and analyzed slow-motion videos of his previous throws to find the best technology when it came to throwing the paper plane.
The Winning Design
The team found that the optimal angle is about 40 degrees in the foreground. As soon as they are as high, throw as hard as possible. That gives us our best distance. The team also decided that A4 paper (a little longer than a typical letter paper) was the best to manipulate and fold into the winning plane. With these meticulously thought-out design decisions and careful attention to the numerous rules and guidelines of the Guinness World Record team, the three should break a record.
The Record-Breaking Flight
The aircraft was in the air for about six seconds at its record-injured distance. The Guinness Paper aircraft recording for the duration of the flight is currently 29.2 seconds. The construction targets for an air-time record would be strongly differentiated from the low-drag version, which we created for the longest distance record.
The Importance of Prototyping
Apart from paper aircraft, this tedious method of back and forth attempts served as proof of the importance of strict prototypes in the real world. Ruble and Jensen began their career as a paper plane in middle school and took part in paper aircraft events in Boeing. Ruble said he enjoyed bringing the newspaper to life and the hard work he had to invest to find ways to improve his designs.
Conclusion and Advice
The record team hopes that their performance will inspire other young and aspiring aviation engineers to hunt their dreams. For those who want to create their own record paper aircraft design, the feat is not impossible, but can take some time (and skills). Making the "Mach 5" best flies at a high relative speed, but in order to achieve this condition, the plane has to be introduced in a certain way. However, if you start with publicly available designs, everyone can improve their skills to continue to throw paper aircraft higher than all of their friends.
