Kanellos Kanellopoulos unintentionally recreated the mythical Greek story of Daedalus and Icarus, whose wings of feathers and wax melted in the sun's heat.
The MIT Daedalus was created by the staff and students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, their target to break the distance (of 74 miles) world record in a man-powered aircraft.
However, in a test flight Kanellopoulos came across a similar problem as Daedalus and Icarus; the Rogers dry lake over which the test flight was taken, had been heated intensely by the sun, causing turbulants which the MIT Daedalus had not been built for.
The Daedalus 87 crashed as the fuselage hit the ground, for the MIT Daedalus 87 and Daedalus and Icarus, the sun was their un-doing.
After the crash, the team decided to reinvent the pedal-powered aircraft, and created the Daedalus 88, which is still in use today.
The archive article was published 23 April 1988.
Reporting by Georgia Ray.
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