NOVA · Season 5 · Episode 10

“Icarus' Children”

Aired Thursday 30 March 1978

In the summer of 1977 Paul MacCready, a California scientist and businessman, won the coveted Kremer Prize. His achievement was to design and build an airplane which completed, unaided, a one-mile figure-eight course entirely under the power provided by the pilot himself. This is the story of those many failures and MacCready's success.

S5 E10 discussion