Tribute by Dr. Michael Ben-Eli

September 15, 2007 - If anyone deserves to be remembered as a Master Design Scientist it would surely be Paul MacCready, who passed on August 28, 2007.

Paul spent his career pioneering extreme transportation solutions and the company he founded in 1971, AeroVironment, is a hotbed of breakthrough innovations in unmanned aerial vehicles, electric vehicles and non-polluting, alternative energy systems. In his work, Paul epitomized Bucky’s concept of doing more with less. He made aviation history in 1979, with Gossamer Condor, the first ever craft to sustain a controlled, human-powered flight. The feather light Condor, weighting only 70 pounds with a wing span of 90 feet, challenged conventional thinking about vehicle efficiency demonstrating an effective application of radical “performance per pound.” It was followed by the Gossamer Albatross and the first human-powered flight across the English Channel. Then came the sun-powered Solar Challenger, flying from Paris to an airfield in the UK, and later the remote-controlled, solar-powered Path Finder, which reached fifty thousand feet into the stratosphere.

I had the opportunity to meet Paul just weeks before he passed. The context was a series of interviews all part of a research project launched in collaboration with the Buckminster Fuller Institute. The purpose of the project is to research, refresh, and rearticulate the concept of Design Science with emphasis on its relevance to the sustainability challenges facing humanity today. Joshua Arnow, who initiated and has been deeply involved with this effort, suggested that sharing the experience of interviewing Paul with the BFI network would be an appropriate tribute to the man and his work. With some hesitation and a sense of deep humility, I agreed to make an attempt.  READ MORE »