A couple of years ago, while trying to read Caesar's De Bello Gallico in college, I learned the origins of a very thrilling word: Audacity.
Audacity comes from the Latin verb audēre, which means "to dare".
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary describes it as "arrogant disregard of normal restraints".
Is it just me, or does that sounds like a starting point for coming up with wickedly good new ideas and blasting open new possibilities?
Today's New York Times has a great article about some "crazy" individuals who aim to destroy assumptions about what humans can and cannot do.
They want to make it possible for humans to fly.
No, they're not attaching prosthetic wings in secret surgical experiments, they're designing special suits--similar to the wings of a flying squirrel--and working out a way to land safely without a parachute.
It's not just some crazy dream.
The wing suits actually work for aerial maneuvering, and the main challenge is now to create a way for the flier to glide to a stop when they finally reach the ground.
Of course, they're not there yet. There's still the whole "hitting the ground at 75 mph" issue to work out.
At the same time though, the future fliers are well on their way. One aspirant is building a $2 million slanted landing runway, while another is developing a suit that lets fliers land on their feet on a horizontal surface.
And they definitely have the right attitude.
Jeb Corliss, one of the aspiring fliers, told the NY Times that people want to fly “Because everybody thinks that it’s not possible. The point is to show people anything can be done. If you want to do amazing things, then you have to take amazing risks.”
That definitely sounds like "audacity" to me!
And can you imagine though what will happen when they do succeed? No one thought that the Wright brothers could fly either.
Download flying_humans.pdf (Best to go to NY Times though... they have a great video!)
*Photo of Jeb Corliss is from NY Times article by Axel Koester
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