Everything was set to go Wednesday morning. The San Diego Air & Space Museum’s exact replica of the engine that powered the Wright Brothers’ first airplane was set up outside the museum, ready to be fired up.
But then, nothing. Museum staff couldn’t get it to start.
The museum’s Supervising Machinist Robert McClure knows the engine inside and out. He knew what was wrong.
“Our first problem this morning was fuel, we weren’t getting enough fuel. And then we got enough fuel, and then we had no ignition and we couldn’t get … something got shorted out so we had no ignition to fire the fuel off,” he said.
The original engine was actually built by the Wright Brothers’ mechanic Charles Taylor. The museum’s President and CEO Jim Kidrick says what happened Wednesday morning probably happened to Taylor and the Wright Brothers before their successful flight in 1903.
“It’s probably indicative of what they experienced many, many, many times before that first flight, realizing that first one was only 12 seconds and 120 feet,” Kidrick said.
Just steps away from the engine, inside the museum’s rotunda, is an exact replica of the airplane that engine powered, the Wright Flyer. And both in the rotunda and throughout the museum, there are other milestones of flight.
Things started to unfold quickly in the world of powered aviation after the Wright Brothers’ achievement.
In 1911, Glenn Curtiss sold the Navy its first airplanes, right here in San Diego.
“Then we have on May 20, 1927, Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic solo when people had died trying to do that,” Kidrick said.
In the rotunda, right below the Wright Flyer, there is an exact replica of Charles Lindbergh’s airplane, The Spirit of St. Louis. Despite its name, it was actually built by San Diego’s Ryan Airlines.
Kidrick ticked off other aeronautical milestones, represented by craft found in the museum.
“Of course, Amelia Earhart crosses the Atlantic solo five years to the day later after Lindbergh. Oct. 14, (19)47, we break the sound barrier, and nobody thought that was going to happen … In 1969, we walk on the moon, and we're going to go back to the moon, and I think we'll get to Mars eventually,” he said.
From the possible future, back to the knowable past, specifically the replica of the Wright Brothers’ engine. It might not have wanted to start on Wednesday morning, but “one year from today, it’ll be running,” McClure said confidently.
It may have been quiet for the celebration, but the engine is a piece of machinery that speaks to the ages — the little engine that launched humans into the skies above earth and space beyond.
