When one comes to increase the size of the craft, the possibility rapidly fades away. This is because of the difficulties of carrying sufficient fuel. It will readily be seen, therefore, why the Atlantic flight is out of the question.
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"The course of the experiment was not exactly according to program. The machine started to make a series of dives and dashes in various directions. It was a rather wild ride."
"The course of the experiment was not always smooth. The machine would start all right, but the propelling power was not sufficient to overcome the resistance of the air."
"We have been making daily flights, and the machine is working perfectly."
"We have been making flights of over an hour in length."
"If we worked on the assumption that what is currently regarded as impossible is really impossible, we should never have made any progress."
American aviation pioneers who achieved the first sustained powered controlled airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, NC, on December 17, 1903. Closely associated with Octave Chanute (their gliding mentor and aeronautical correspondent). For an intellectual contrast, see Samuel Pierpont Langley, Smithsonian Institution Secretary and government-funded aviation researcher — Langley's Aerodrome crashed twice into the Potomac in October-December 1903 with $50,000 of War Department funding; the Wright Brothers' bicycle-shop empiricism beat Langley's institutional Big Science by 9 days. The most-cited example in engineering history of empirical-tinkerer beating institution-funded credentialism.
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Making an aircraft bigger quickly becomes impractical because you need exponentially more fuel, and carrying that extra fuel adds weight that demands even more fuel. The math works against you. For this reason, flying across the Atlantic Ocean is simply not feasible. The engineering constraints of fuel capacity versus aircraft weight make long-distance ocean crossings an unrealistic goal given current technology.
The Wrights were meticulous engineers who grounded every claim in rigorous calculation rather than speculation. Having struggled for years to get their 605-pound Flyer airborne with a lightweight gasoline engine, they understood fuel-to-weight ratios intimately. Their caution reflects the same empirical mindset that led them to build a wind tunnel and reject flawed lift tables, preferring verified limits over optimistic dreams about aviation's future.
Spoken in the early 1900s, when powered flight was brand new and engines were heavy, inefficient, and underpowered. Transatlantic travel meant steamships taking a week. The statement predates Lindbergh's 1927 solo crossing by roughly two decades, when the idea seemed absurd. It captures the cautious realism of early aviation pioneers before rapid advances in engine design, aerodynamics, and fuel chemistry made long-range flight possible.
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