Flight part III: Application engineering and science

One of the unexpected outcomes of the quest for flight was the distinction of science and engineering and their unity which resulted in humanity’s ability to escape Earth's gravity to explore space.

‘The real and legitimate goal of the sciences is the endowment of human life
with new inventions’.
(Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum,
which overturned Platonic and Aristotelian thought)

By 1780, three of the six forms of possible flight had been demonstrated:

• Flight by direct jet thrust (the rocket)

• Flight by rotating wings (the drawstring helicopter and …