Good Night, Sweet Icarus

R.I.P Paul B. MacCready Paul MacCready, inventor of the Gossamer Condor, the first human powered heavier-than-air aircraft, and the Gossamer Albatross, the first human powered aircraft to cross the English Channel, has died, according to AeroVironment, the company he founded.

“You can do all kinds of things if you just plunge ahead,” he said in an interview with Science in 1986. “It doesn’t mean you’re any good at them, but you can be good enough.”