飞翔的梦想与现实

Oh, to be free like a bird. It's been the stuff of fantacy, and of reality. Sort of. A self-contained flying man. This jet pack from 1960s had barely enough fuel to fly 30 seconds. So the dream languished for decades. Everyone agreed it was completely impractical , except Micheal Moshier. Micheal Moshier: The pilot controls the flaps with the right-hand control stick. Moshier, a former Navy-pilot-turned-entrepreneur, has spent the last five years of his life working secretly on a tiny twin blade strap helicopter called The Solotrek. He said he had made his firstcautious（谨慎的）flight only two feet up at first. But to Moshier, two feet up was like being in the heaven. Micheal Moshier: It was exhilarating beyond description. I will tell you I didin't sleep that night or for several nights thereafter. It was a monumental moment. With a little more work, he says, the machine will zip around the treetops at 80mph, stabilized by computer. He can picture the army using it to get over rugged terrain, police on search and rescue missions, and if an occasional daredevil wants to beats traffic, well, Moshier believes a pilot who can walk and chew gum with minimal training should be able to get on the aircraft suitably. There's just this one nagging question, the machine will fly, but will the idea? True , Moshier has help from the Defense Department and from NASA, but won't the machine be noisy or dangerous or hard to park? Jeffrey Schroeder (NASA scientist): I think we can do it but it would be expensive. The challenge is to make it so that it has more of a mess appeal. Perhaps we are only destined to dream of only flying without wings and never do it. On the other hand, Micheal Moshier was two feet up.