What Sir George Cayley started

 

 

Many a time and oft have I walked Regent St.  I kid you not, I’ve been living in Central London and around for 40 yrs.
Every one of those countless times, I’ve walked past some educational institute which has on the wall a plaque saying it was established by Sir George Cayley.  It’s not that I’ve noticed, it’s just become embedded in my subconscious. 

I always assumed he was some 19^th Century philanthropist.  I come from a culture where it was common for someone of means, in that century, to establish a library or somesuch socially benevolent institution for the benefit of the locals and to be remembered when they’re gone.
Until .... one day in the library, a while before Lockdown (which is our temporal signpost these days), I checked their book sale and saw “Sir George Cayley’s Aeronautics 1796 – 1855.”  My curiosity was aroused.

It was a revelation.  Cayley was the originator of aeronautics !!

In the 18^th Century the pursuit of knowledge was a pastime of the wealthy and Cayley was one such.
His interest was flight and he studied what was known and observed what he could from nature.  Among what was known were Newton’s Laws.
Cayley determined there were four forces for flight.  Weight, lift, thrust and drag.  He did experiments and came up with the aerofoil.  He built and flew a glider.
In the search for lightness he designed the spoked wheel.

Why didn’t they teach us this stuff in school ??  Jeez, if you want to instil a sense of national pride, why don’t they teach kids the Wright brothers read Cayley !!

Cayley’s flight plans were confounded by a lack of motive power. No practicable engine to power the machine.
(Steam engines were in their infancy.  In 1933 Bessler made a steam engined plane, it flew successfully and was very quiet.  There are videos :)
It wasn’t until the internal combustion engine that powered flight could be made.  Hence the Wright brothers.

Because all this experimental flight stuff was expensive, Cayley had a sponsor, Lord Mahon.
When things were going swimmingly he and Mahon discussed the humanitarian consequences of what they were up to.

The history of humanity has been the conquest of nature rather than adaptation to it.
Would the benefits of air travel outweigh the costs in terms of warfare ?? 
The military uses were obvious.  As Wellington later observed, he was always trying to guess “what was on the other side of the hill”.  The view from the air would solve that.

They decided between them that the social benefits outweighed the military consequences.  I’m not convinced they weren’t trying to salve their consciences by the excitement of what they were up to.
Plus there was a lot of international competition in the field.

 

Move forward 200 yrs.  Those of us who were playing FPS computer games at the turn of the century were mocked “you’re being trained up for WW3”

Back in WWI, soldiers, fatalistic as front line soldiers are, would say “if the bullet’s got your number on it that’s your lot”.  Hence “your number’s up”.   By 2020 “your number” had been replaced by “your (GPS) coordinates”.  Satellite reconnaissance could spot you as a dot on the ground. 

Today, we have mass public transport via airlines.  We have missiles, that have replaced bombers and are still subject to the forces of flight.  Weight, lift, thrust and drag.
We have UAVs,  guided bombs, and we have drones.  This latter is a light, unmanned craft, little bigger than a kite and guided by a remote controller on a pad like the one we were playing FPS games on at the turn of the century.

Drones have replaced light artillery in infantry support. Over the battlefield fly surveillance drones, looking for targets.  When they spot one, they call in an armed drone which, guided visually by the guy with the gamepad, crashes explosively into the target or drops a grenade on an individual. (depends who gets the call.) 
No longer is a soldier’s number on a randomly fired bullet across an open space.

Today, the battlefield is abuzz with the sounds of drones.  Cayley would recognise the shapes and envy the propulsion.

He lived in a time beyond our imagination.  The main motive power was horse.  The Enclosure Acts were coming in,  open land was being turned into fields and the view changed.  "As far as the eye can see" was getting nearer.
There was no electricity and no medicine as we know it.  It was still The Little Ice Age for half his life.
We live in a time that would, reasonably, have been beyond his imagination.

 
Action: 

This is what the only way out of the encircled town of Pokrovsk looks like

And here's the situation when you've sought refuge in a building and are attacked by drones.  (they've obv small warheads.  A 155mm shell would drop the whole building.)