11-Pound Model Plane Vs. The Atlantic 164
merrell writes: "Apparently some model plane builders are going to send some balsa wood loaded with some tiny computers and GPS receiver across the Atlantic, running on less than a gallon of gas. The Washington Post has an article on it. Just goes to show what some retired NASA engineers with lots of free time can do. :)" If this was a movie, it might sound too unlikely.
Re:Weight (Score:2)
Private cruise missles now possible (Score:4)
Re:Weight (Score:5)
Hello cheap cruise missle! (Score:5)
Re:Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these? (Score:5)
Ha, a good engineer will go to any amount of effort to avoid extra effort.
Oh great... (Score:5)
Re:Weight (Score:5)
Re:Weather (Score:5)
Been done.... (Score:5)
http://www.insitugroup.com/LaimaFlight.html [insitugroup.com]
This plane was a little bigger, and made mostly out of carbon/epoxy composites, but it weighed 29 lbs and flew trans-atlantic on a gallon and a half of gas! The first unmanned trans-atlantic flight ever!
The University of Washington Aero/Astro department is trying to build one to cross the pacific first too, but those guys at the air force beat us to it. Of course, their budget was MUCH bigger than ours.... Our airplane is only 50 lbs and 6 feet long!
Re:Hello cheap cruise missle! (Score:2)
Detectability? (Score:2)
No surprise (Score:3)
--Kit
Re:Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these? (Score:2)
Prevailing winds key (Score:3)
IIRC, there is a prevailing wind that should ensure them a good chance of tailwinds for this trip - the same prevailing winds that people use for Atlantic balloon crossings.
Go you big red fire engine!
Re:Area 51 (Score:2)
I'm sure the security guards at Area 51 are equipped with full-automatic weapons, and with nightscopes and modern M16A1's that model airplane you're suggesting will be blown to pieces from all the small-arms gunfire.
Re:Area 51 (Score:2)
That's why modern jet airliners have fuel tanks that carry fuel in the thousands of gallons.
Re:Hello cheap cruise missile! (Score:4)
More vrooom for your buck.. (Score:4)
I've been looking at the Honda Insights because they get around 70mpg which I think is impressive but yeh 3000mpg just blows that away! To bad I'm to big to sit on a model plane.
At a recent LUG meeting we had a guy from our Universities solar car team give a talk and he mentioned that some people have built motorcycles that are entirely solar powered. To me that would be the best. I'm seriously considering trying to build one for myself. Has anyone experience in such things? My biggest question is the legality of driving such a thing on the highway. It'd be awesome to take roadtrips and never have to buy gas though.
Re:Weight (Score:5)
Re:There goes the drug war (Score:4)
"Honest, officer, I was just adding another 4000 nodes to my Google cluster! Why won't you believe me??"
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Re:Let's just hope... (Score:3)
2) They converted all their metric units correctly
3) It does not burn up in the atmosphere on approach
4) It doesn't accidentally ram and bring down any foreign fighters flanking it.
Kevin Fox
--
'Diamond Age', anyone? (Score:2)
Yeah yeah, balsa wood isn't nano-tech, I know. But the first horse-drawn carriage didn't look much like a Ferrari F1 racecar, either.
--Mid
This has already been done (see link) (Score:3)
http://www.aerosonde.com/atlantic_crossing.htm
This group, using modified RC airplane parts, made such a crossing in 1998. Their plane is now in the Smithsonian.
Retired engineers vs. "productive" ones (Score:5)
There's a lot to be said for letting brilliant people do whatever they want, without giving them much money. It's this sort of spirit that used to drive dot-coms, back before incubators, before the stock boom took off and everything was about stock valuations. Suddenly, millions of dollars were flying around, and everybody was under pressure to turn it into profits.
eBay Use (Score:4)
Re:There goes the drug war (Score:4)
Thank God none of them is in a real position of power... D'oh!
Re:Weather (Score:2)
Think about that for a second - that's 11 pounds (5 Kg to those in less enlightened parts of the world) for airframe, powerplant, GPS navigation, computer control systems, radio gear, servos, batteries, and oh yeah, enough fuel to fly across the Atlantic ocean.
This is a "righteous" hack - my hat's off to these guys. I only wish I were part of their team...
Re:Private cruise missles now possible (Score:2)
As for your second question, I think the US could only benefit from improved culture and entertainment if someone flew a 1000 lb. bomb into the 2002 Oscars...
Go here to support this project (Score:2)
http://www.dc-rc.org/STAR.HTM [dc-rc.org]
They're looking for donations to help defray the cost of equipment, supplies, travel for the team, etc.
Re:The strength of Balsa (Score:3)
There are cases where balsa is notably superior to other materials though - I can give you two right off the bat from modern airplanes: The cargo load floors in some military cargo planes are a sandwich of aluminum skins bonded to a balsa core. Balsa is an ideal core material here, even though it's heavier than alternatives like aluminum or nomex honeycomb, it's also many times tougher and more resistant to the damage that you can imagine the floor of a cargo plane takes, and also makes the floor puncture-resistant. Another example is the wing tank structure in the A-7 fighter jet, another aluminum/balsa composite structure that provides properties unobtainable by using other materials.
If there were more aerospace grade balsa available (and there are people working on genetic improvements to eliminate grain defects and even grow "square" trees), we would see it used much more often. Many natural materials are far, far better than our best synthetic substitutes, but they're not always in a readily usable form. (Take spider silk fibers as an example - we know they're they're much stronger than anything we can make, but we can't figure out how to make them...)
Re:Its already been done - using two gallons (Score:3)
'Hill said his plane will meet the international definition of a model: It must weigh only 11 pounds and be hand-launched. "That's the real challenge," he said.'
They talked about others too:
"Technically, his model won't be the first robot plane to cross an ocean.
Earlier this week, an Air Force robot spy plane successfully flew 8,600 miles across the Pacific from California to Australia. And three years ago, a private unmanned weather reconnaissance plane reportedly crossed the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Scotland.
But the Air Force drone is bigger than a jetliner, and the weather plane weighed 29 pounds and was launched from the roof of a car.
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4)
Ahhh (Score:5)
Re:Balsa wood? (Score:2)
He looked at me funny and told me that the plane was steel and fabric. He even rattled off the type of steel it was, mentioned that it's not used anymore for aircraft.
I'm surprised no one here has thought of ice buildup on the wings of this model aircraft. Maybe they put in some kind of heat pipe on the leading edge.
The plane's name (Score:4)
Last weekend, most of the team gathered at the horse pasture in northern Montgomery County lent by veteran aviator Beecher Butts, 88, whose charity has prompted the modelers to name their plane "The Spirit of Butts Farm."
Hope the wind's aroma isn't too frightening!
Re:There goes the drug war (Score:3)
And no, the US doesn't *just* watch for drugs comming across the border.We do areal survalence looking for people growing drugs, monitor electrical bills watching for people growing pot hydroponically, search inbound ocean vessels, watch for people buying chemicals to make Meth, and any number of of other tactics.
I happen to think that a large part of the "war on drug"s is irrational, but to suggest that we are naive enough to believe that drugs only come from mexico is just wrong.
Re:There goes the drug war (Score:2)
There goes the drug war (Score:5)
Today, there are dirigible-carried radars along our southern borders watching for smuggling planes. Will they see a plane like this, flying at a few hundred feet AGL? Not likely!
Re:There goes the drug war (Score:5)
I knew lots of "rednecks" ( a lot of them were not real rednecks, just crazy Texans ) that had taken potshots at the blimp at various times. It always seemed stupid to me because those bullets have to come down somewhere, but it didn't occur to me that they were actually hitting their target until my Civil Air Patrol unit took a tour of the blimp facility. The folks there showed us numerous bullet holes and patches on the covering, including one on the edge of the gondola where it attaches to the bag. Some of them described the experience of flying slowly along and just watching while a tiny figure down below blazed away with a deer rifle.
They had a little collection of hunting arrows, squashed bullets, crossbow bolts, etc that had been removed from the skin.
About a year after that a bunch of the CAP folks and friends (I wasn't present) were launching model rockets near there and someone got the blimp with that big five foot long Estes "Black Cat" model -- it didn't pierce the skin, it hit a glancing blow and bounced off, and everyone dove into their cars and fled, abandoning some nice rockets.
Anyway, since we're talking about model airplanes -- the blimp folks told a long story about a powerful model airplane ripping a long gash in the bag, while they were landing somewhere in California. It nearly caused the thing to collapse, it couldn't take off at all until they got a cherry picker and patched it with a massive amount of duct tape, put all they helium they had on hand in the bag and tossed all extra weight, and managed to limp it over to a place where they could work on it better.
Re:There goes the drug war (Score:5)
On the other hand, the "Crazy Texan" personality can be educated and quite sophisticated, but they are still Crazy Texans. There is a substantial overlap between the groups, of course. But an example of a crazy Texan would be Ross Perot, a quite educated person, who still thought nothing out of the ordinary in hiring a bunch of mercenaries to go get his people out of Iran. He understood that there were experts in the State Department and the CIA working on all those things, and that by being a loose cannon he could possibly screw up important national matters -- but the conclusion that all those people were screwing everything up and that by hiring some insane vietnam veterans he could do a better job, is a natural one for the Crazy Texan mentality. But Ross Perot is not a redneck.
For examples of Crazy Texans, think of the outfits that specialize in putting out oil well fires. Snuffing those with explosives, or plugging them while they are burning, is pretty sophisticated; rednecks can't do it, but it is a job well suited to Crazy Texans.
So what I was trying to say when I said that the people who were shooting at the Goodyear blimp were often Crazy Texans instead of rednecks, is that these people were smart, college bound, computer literate, New York Times reading people; but if they are sitting at the computer and hear that odd engine sound of the blimp, and go out and look at it, some special Texan circuit closes in their brain, and the next thing you know is they are shooting away.
Rednecks go fishing. Crazy Texans tie a meat hook with a dead rabbit on it to the trailer hitch of their truck with rope, in an attempt to catch a six foot catfish that was observed in a lake near Houston (true story). When a number of animals from an emu farm wandered into a neighboring subdivision, various rednecks attempted to rope them or shoo them into a fenced enclosure; Crazy Texans were observed chasing them on dirt bikes with roman candles pvc pipe bottle rocket bazookas.
HTH.
Re:You really don't know anything about models (Score:3)
You are the weakest link, goodbye!
Area 51 (Score:4)
You could launch this baby from Vegas or out in the desert a couple hundred miles away from anything interesting so there would be no way for them to track you...
Pizza delivery! (Score:2)
Just think of the potential for ordering in pizza and Beer!
Better yet (kite crossing ocean URL) (Score:2)
Unmanned Atlantic Crossing (Score:2)
Well technically this sort of thing has been done once already. As the article mentions, a group of robotics researchers already sent a 29 pound aircraft to make the same flight in 1998. Here is a link [washington.edu]. I believe they are now planning a Pacific crossing. Their original Atlantic plane cost around $10,000 dollars though, its now hanging in a flight museum in the Pacific Northwest somewhere. The plane, named "Laima" after a Latvian Goddess of Good Luck, was the third of four of their planes to attempt the crossing. The first and fourth were lost in transit and the second died because of a flight computer malfunction shortly after takeoff. Now this smaller craft has all the same problems of size Laima did, but with the added problem of significantly flimsier construction and probably weaker flight AI. Somehow I doubt its going to make it but good luck all the same.
How long before government usurps this for spying (Score:2)
*conspiracy theory* (Score:5)
Re:PAN H(AM)STER 101. (Score:2)
Re:And people are saying... (Score:3)
KFG
Re:As a point of interest. . . (Score:3)
You see, in the old days, 20 or 30 years ago, we used a medium of information dissemination called "print".
That's about how long ago this happened and if the story has found its way to the web it's hiding from all of us.
It was two gentleman from the midwest that did this. It took them many years to get a successful crossing. Every year they would travel to Cape Cod, ( by their analysis that is where the prevailing winds eastward gave the greatest chance of success), and release dozens of kites tied to buckets.
To each kite they attached a note, and HALF of a ten dollar bill, promising anyone that found the kite that they could claim the other half by calling them and telling them where the kite was recovered.
I might have first run across the story in New Yorker, or it might have been Smithsonian or even National Geographic. I'm really not sure this many decades down the road.
KFG
Re:As a point of interest. . . (Score:3)
Flamebait? I can't figure it. It's a true story, one that I have found fascinating for decades and thought others might be interested in hearing about as well.
Perhaps its absence from the www has convinced someone that it can't be real?
Life happened before 1990. Not all of it has been transfered to the web.
KFG
The strength of Balsa (Score:4)
It is strength per unit of weight that is critical in this particular undertaking.
And contrary to what most think softwood is stronger than hardwood * per pound.*
ALSO contrary to what most people think Balsa is a hardwood, not a softwood. The terms hard and soft wood are biological classifications, not an actual discription of the wood.
KFG
Re:Hello cheap cruise missle! (Score:4)
KFG
As a point of interest. . . (Score:4)
The kite was tied to a bucket which was filled with water and dropped into the sea. The bucket held the string of the kite and the kite dragged the bucket with the prevailing winds.
Cape Cod to Ireland.
KFG
Re:The strength of Balsa (Score:5)
I rather thought that what I meant could be at least roughly deduced by the reader by refering to the subject at hand.
I meant in overall properties, given the certain structural shapes and assembleges germain to stick built objects such as houses, cars, and . . . model airplanes.
As you intimate structural materials have many different properties. Wood, unlike steel, is not isotropic and so its properties are greatly effected by its orientation to load, at least in its natural state. Bear in mind that there are many high tech composite wood products these days with rather remarkable properties. But since the subject is balsa I'll confine myself to wood as she comes from the tree.
Wood has a tensile strenth of about 5 ton f/in.^2, mild steel is about 28.
Mild steel has an elongation percent at failure of about 20. Wood is close enough to zero to count. In a situation where dimensional stability is of higher importance than unltimate failure strength wood is often the superior choice.
Mild steel's Young's Modulus is about 30 lbf/in.^2 * 10^6, wood only about 1.5. Wood is less stiff than steel, however its elastic limit is very, very high. Wood will bend and return to its original shape in ways that make it in many cases a more desirable structurual material than steel.
But things get REALLY interesting when we start to look at beam strength. Beam strength goes up by
* the square of the cross section.*
Given the need for a particular beam length, ohhh, say the main spar of an airplane wing just to pick a hypothetical example at random, and the need to keep weight down, a wood beam of * the same weight* will be of markedly greater cross section, and again, * strength goes up by the square of the cross section,* The wooden spar will be stronger than the steel spar. Or we could, as an alternative, make the wooden spar of somewhat smaller cross section, giving up strength but * saving weight*.
It would be perfectly possible to build model airplanes out of steel. It isn't done not because of cost,(steel is cheaper than balsa), not because of constructiion difficulties, ( balsa plane construction is no piece of cake and working with steel isn't significantly harder), it is done because it results in a structurally superior product * per pound* than using steel would. ( And please note that when the cross section gets sufficeintly large it is perfectly possible to gain all the benfits of tubing with wood. Sailboat spars are constructed this way as well as wing spars for airplanes)
Using stressed skin construction makes up for wood's low Young's modulus yielding remarkably stiff structures.
That, in a nutshell without writing a formal monograph, which I refuse to do, is what I meant by 'strength.'
When we get into the more modern composite materials wood looses some overall 'strength' but gains isotropicness.
In the field of military aircraft two planes in particular, from two different world wars, stand out as having such a reputation for sturdiness and ablility to take fire that they are legends to this day. From WWI there is the Roland C-2 "Walfisch", and from WWII there is the Mosquito. Both of these planes were molded wooden composite. The Roland was so sturdy that by the end of the war the tailgunners were in the habit of shooting at enemy plane * directly through their own fusilage!*
Now THAT is strong, but you won't find that kind of 'strong' in any engineering reference or ANSI standard.
By the way, what are YOU smoking. You havn't a clue what the terms softwood and hardwood mean. The gentleman in the post below you got it right. Go look it up.
Oh, and you COULD have correctly criticized me for one thing, I should have said "botanical" classification, rather than " biological", but you missed my ACTUAL error. Go figure.
KFG
handicap (Score:4)
Global Hawk (Score:4)
:)
True hackers (Score:5)
Now go and ask yourself that question.
--
Comment removed (Score:3)
The Piper Cub Offense (Score:3)
August, 1998. On South Uist island in the Outer Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, a group of men huddled around a van, jacketed against the 25 knot wind. There was no way that they could hear the sound of the aircraft's engine over the persistent whistling of the gale; they would see it -- if they saw it at all -- before they would hear it. And it was an hour overdue on a potentially historic flight.
The small, single-engined craft was attempting the first solo flight across the Atlantic, but this was more of a solo than the one Lindbergh made some 70 years earlier. Where there had been one pilot on that flight, which was for Lindbergh the irreducible minimum crew, there was none on Laima. The plane was trying to fly itself solo from one side of the ocean to a particular spot on the other side. Instead of a compass and stars to steer by, it had a microprocessor and a global positioning system (GPS) receiver...
Read the rest at:
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/j_raskin_1.html [acm.org]
Reinventing...? (Score:3)
Insitu Group (http://www.insitugroup.com) and University of Washington Aero/Astro (http://www.aa.washington.edu)UAV. Fall flight target: cross-pacific on a "few"
gallons of gas. Interesting communications, instrumentation.
Yeah but... (Score:2)
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these? (Score:5)
Of course that begs the question: aren't we lazy enough already?
Kurdt
Excuse me? (Score:2)
Actually, the dot-com flameout was due to there NOT being any pressure to make a profit!
Re:radio contact? (Score:4)
Remember they have a little 1Hp internal combustion engine. It could generate electricity pretty cheaply and efficiently. Or a little cellphone lithium-ion battery should give plenty of juice. I doubt they're maintaining continuous contact in either direction. Some of the earlier posts suggest the plane is being operated by remote control, like those lame battling robots on TV. But I'm sure the computers are there to make this thing semi-autonomous, checking GPS fixes and sending return telemetry at relatively infrequent intervals (i.e. not constantly) to keep radio use down. The thing is steering from waypoint to waypoint, like commercial autopilots, maintaining a predefined flight profile without somebody steering the thing.
This project is so cool, I'm sure these guys are having the time of their lives.
Re:Glass Fiber (Score:2)
There's also the added weight of engine components (extra ply doublers etc.). You could probably built a lighter model of glass fiber, and I'd give it better odds of a sucessful flight.
It would also depend on the auto-pilot how much stress would be on the air frame. IIRC auto-pilots on models use the horizon for leveling. If it's very sensitive they may end up with a problem like MIT (?) had when they built cars that followed the one in front.
--
Murphy Bitter
Weather (Score:5)
I'm not quite sure why they didn't build a glass fiber model. It isn't that difficult to do. They usually run well in the rain, if slower.
It should be interesting to see how well they do.
--
Murphy Bitter
PAN H(AM)STER 101. (Score:5)
--
Murphy Bitter
P.S. I have heard of people putting hamsters in models, they usually don't survive. The G's are usually way too high.
Re:Weight (Score:5)
We humans tend to notice wind as very turbulent because
Re:Weight (Score:2)
Re: Import / Export (Score:2)
Not any more...
Re:True hackers (Score:2)
Re:Area 51 (Score:2)
You really don't know anything about models (Score:4)
Ask ANYBODY who has flown a model airplane about your "10 feet off the ground" maneuver. Any little gust of wind will have it crashing. Whenever I do any maneuvers THAT close to the ground, it is the hardest, and most stressful part of flying. I can see small, light computers being able to fly a plane across the ocean using waypoints at a few thousand feet. Lots of time for compensation for gusts, etc. But terrain-following? Get real.
This isn't to say someone SHOULDN'T try flying a plane over Area 51. I think that'd be cool. Since you aren't going trans-ocean (maybie only from the next state, or somewhere similarly annonymous) a good high-resolution camera wouldn't be that difficult to mount. Flying at 300-400 feet AGL, you would still get awesome pictures. And with a transimitter, even if your plane gets shot down (by rifles, etc. Wouldn't be that difficult to hit, even at night. The heat of the engine would be easy to spot) you will still have the images. :)
Profitable dot -coms? (Score:3)
What dotcomm was that? The one universal thing all dot-coms I've heard of did was avoid any attempts to make any sort profit whatsoever. Selling stuff at cost(buy.com), delivering stuff to your hone without charging for delivery (kozmo.com), not charging for shipment of computer equipment(outpost.com), delivery costs more than the actual item (pets.com), spending hundreds of millions before launching a website (boo.com), etc.
Re:Weight (Score:3)
Also, 45 mph (Target speed) == 66 ft/sec. If the wind was to, say, force the nose down (As you say, it'll move - or change orientation), it would take just over 30 seconds for the plane to descend to ocean level, and that's not taking into consideration the extra velocity added by the wind. Granted, the engineers could probably pull it out before then, but what if they encountered a strong, continual downdraft?
-- Chris
Weight (Score:5)
-- Chris
Re:Hello cheap cruise missle! (Score:5)
Don't you mean the Rebel Alliance?
"Great shot kid, that was one in a million!"
-- Chris
Re:Been done.... (Score:2)
Re:Weight (Score:5)
GPS systems not only give you your location in latitude/longitude, but also provide elevation. I'm sure they're not stupid enough to let this thing fly without checking it's own elevation to make sure it stays at 2000'.
With that data, and some cool programming, they wouldn't even need to know the orientation of the plane (even if it were upside down). (However, I have a feeling that they also have instruments to measure orientation).
At 66'/sec, the GPS data would change at a fast enough rate that they could make fairly quick analysis of what direction they're going, and what effect control surface changes have. If they decide to pull the elevator "up" and the plane starts going the wrong direction, they can assume that they're upside-down and make opposite corrections. Heck, they could have programmed it with no knowledge of how to "turn left", but rely on the GPS data to tell the plane if it's doing the correct thing (random control movements, feedback analysis of results).
I'm sure it's simpler than that though. q:]
MadCow.
Re: Import / Export (Score:5)
Seriously tho' doesnt it occur to anyone that if this does succeed, it could have very serious implications for smuggling (Like thinks how much crack this thing could carry with it per-flight with a little modification),
Of course the simple internet minded solution would be to legally threaten the balsa-growers, the plane-sellers, and the gasoline-vendors while letting the crack whores continue unmolested.
------------ Dom Howells
Is is a boat...is it a plane? (Score:2)
Daniel
guidance too difficult? (Score:2)
Brings back memories. (Score:5)
Re:Weight (Score:4)
Re:Balsa wood? (Score:2)
Now, keep in mind that I said "properly built" in the first post. If it's not glued properly, it'll suck
Robyn
Re:Balsa wood? (Score:3)
Re: Import / Export (Score:5)
Re:There goes the drug war (Score:5)
Re:There goes the drug war (Score:2)
Re:Hello cheap cruise missle! (Score:5)
Re:The strength of Balsa (Score:3)
To clarify the point:
Hard woods come from deciduous trees. Simply put, if a tree has leaves, it produces hard wood (oak, alder, maple, balsa, etc.), if it has needles it produces.. um.. not hard wood (cedar, pine, fir, etc.) Which doesn't make alot of sense, but there you go :-)
--
Damn it Jim, that's my sphincter, not a jelly donut!!!
Re:Balsa wood? (Score:4)
Lindbergh's plane was cloth over wood!
As far as mounting telemetry in these suckers... yawn? [spyplanes.com] Yes, they make a perfect delivery system for a terrorist. Zero cross section on radar, silent, incredibly hard to see, and they can carry a decent payload.
The big holdup has always been the telemetry, which is quite different than a robotic aircraft. Robotic R/C planes, if perfected and made cheap, would be... a law enforcement nightmare.
My guess is that they (law encforcement) have already thought about this for a while.
Price (Score:2)
Re:Global Hawk (Score:3)
Fueling - $150,000 a tank
Computer Technicians to keep it in the air - $20,000 a day
Actual aircraft - $15 million dollars
Spirit of Butts Farms
Fueling - $2 dollars premium unleaded
Computer Technicians to keep it up in the air - they're doing it for the thrill
Actual aircraft - $30 dollars depending on what grade balsa wood is purchased
The view from Ireland when the plane arrives - Priceless
For everything else, there are copyrighted slogans from our favorite credit card companies...
And people are saying... (Score:4)
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Let's just hope... (Score:4)
2) They converted all their metric units correctly
3) It does not burn up in the atmosphere on approach
Sorry, couldn't resist! :)
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Re:Retired engineers vs. "productive" ones (Score:3)
Re:Weight (Score:5)
It's no exageration to say that Maynard Hill is the world's greatest living R/C aircraft modeller, so I'd have to say that betting on him is the smart play. He's been doing this type of thing better than anyone else for a long, long time