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Man achieves personal flight, again and in some ways less in less impressive fashion that in other recent successes. Head over to Europe and the same goals are achieved in a more spectacular fashion. This seems to harken back to the minor controversy over who really invented the airplane. The Wright Brothers original invention required a catapult for take-off, whereas Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont built the first airplane that didn’t require assistance for take-off, documented and verified by impartial observers. While no one argues that the Wright brothers flew, there are questions about what constitutes enough of a flight to win the accolade of first airplane. By some definitions we’ve achieved time travel already, but there’s a question of substance on precisely what will eventually determine what “time travel” is.
Regardless of where the credit will fall, it seems that we are in a window of time where some decree of personal flight may become a reality. And if history is a dependable teacher, what qualifies as personal flight now and what personal flight will become in the not-too-distant future will be vastly different.