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The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
by John McPhee
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1992-09-01)
ISBN: 0374516359
EAN: 9780374516352
Binding/Media: Paperback - 192 pages
SKU: 072610046
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: Softcover, name address inside, firm binding, has some shelfwear to edges and corners, pages are crisp and clean. All items ship from a smoke-free home.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
This is the fascinating story of the dream of a completely new aircraft, a hybrid of the plane and the rigid airship - huge, wingless, moving slowly through the lower sky. John McPhee chronicles the perhaps unfathomable perseverance of the aircraft's sucessive progenitors.
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Amazon.com Review
Since the explosion of the Hindenburg in Lakehurst, New Jersey, energy-efficient, lighter-than-air ships have given way to gas-guzzling jet aircraft. But in the 1960s, an unusual band of inventors, engineers and investors, again in New Jersey, created the Aereon, a strange, wingless hybrid airplane/dirigible. The Aereon--the Deltoid Pumpkin Seed-- promised to be a safe workhorse of the skies, capable of carrying the payload of entire freight trains with minimal cost. In this exquisitely crafted tale of back-to-the-drawing-board perseverance, McPhee tells the story not only of the Aereon, but of any product development team. He astutely delineates the team members' personalities and interactions, delves back in time to the origins of lighter-than-air craft and the history of propellers, and in the end, makes us wonder why this promising technology hasn't been perfected. Like Aramis: Or the Love of Technology, this is a splendid book about a potentially superior aircraft which has yet to be adopted.
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