And on a higher plane, power-sharing continues to stumble forward, inch by painful inch.
In 1926, a French pilot took off with a crew of three in a plane powered by three Wright engines.
In September, in a hangar in Huntsville, Ala., NASA engineers flew a small propeller-driven model plane powered from the ground by a beam of laser light.
Now, Bertrand Piccard is looking to add a new record to the family mantelpiece by flying a jumbo jet-sized plane powered solely with energy from the sun across America.
He then produced with DuPont the first plane powered entirely by the sun, the Solar Challenger, which in 1981 flew the 163 miles from Paris to Canterbury at a height of 11,000 feet.
Back then, the Boeing Stratocruiser, a long-range propeller plane powered by four piston engines, was state of the art, making the trip between the islands and the mainland in about 10 hours, roughly double the time it takes today.
On-the-ground tests are encouraging, but proof will come when a plane powered by the tweaked Trents takes off which the firm hopes to try out later this year.The Monash device, put on display in the closing days of February at the Australian International Airshow, is what is known as an auxiliary power unit.
On the morning of March 10 , 1956 Mr. Twiss, a test pilot for Britain's Fairey Aviation, climbed into the cockpit of the delta-winged Fairey Delta 2, a research plane powered by a single turbojet engine, and took off from an experimental aircraft station near England's south coast.
And if you're still concerned about flying in a plane powered by plants, his message is: don't be.
