Dream machine II

　　When asked about his dreams of flight. Moller menti ons hummingbireds, which fascinated him as a child. "I never wanted to fly a conventional plane," he says. "I wanted something i could get in, fly out to a place nob ody had flown before, and then set down."

　　The notion prompted him to build a helicopter when he was 14, in rural canada, and would turn into an obse ssion. Moller barely graduated from high school, spendi ng most of his time building a car from stray parts. A professor at megill university got him enrolled there d espite the academic shortcomings; moller rewarded that faith with a career that led to a Ph.D and a professors hip at the university of california at davis in 1963.

　　Early efforts were thwarted by the lack of a low-co st-engine with sufficient power, but moller saw the fut ure in the then-radical wanke(汪克尔) engine. Under develo pment by several auto companies, the wankel replaced co nventional pistons(传统活塞), cylinders, and connecting rod s(传动杆) with a triangular rotor(三角形转子) housed in a troch oidal0shaped chamber(椭圆形发动机腔)- an oval that creates com pression and expansion as the rotor turns around.

　　The wankel has three combustion chambers around a c entral crankshaft, and a rotary motion that makes the m otor easy to balance. Embraced, then rejected, by GM, w ankels powered several european cars. Today, mazda is t he only major automaker with a rotary engine in volume production.

　　The high power-to-weight ratio, its short, stiff cr ankshaft capable of handing propeller torque loads, and the compact shape seemed ideal for a small aircraft eng ine-and in fact, curtiss wright and john deere pursued this theme. But not as persistently as moller, who saw an alternative to gas turbines, and the key to low-cost vertical flight.