tl;dr: There was a prize offerered in the 1950s-1960s for the first person to build a human-powered plane that could run a short course (call it the X-prize of human flight). Lots of people tried to win by building planes that looked like planes.
Paul MacCready was the first to realize the key to the spec: it had to fly, but didn't have to look like a plane. He rapidly prototyped things that flew but didn't look like planes, and used substitutes for normal safety procedures (flying low and slow rather than building a strong cockpit). He learned from many failures rather than spending months building to learn once.
Lesson: make sure you understand what the spec is really asking for, and prototype quickly around that.
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tl;dr: There was a prize offerered in the 1950s-1960s for the first person to build a human-powered plane that could run a short course (call it the X-prize of human flight). Lots of people tried to win by building planes that looked like planes.
Paul MacCready was the first to realize the key to the spec: it had to fly, but didn't have to look like a plane. He rapidly prototyped things that flew but didn't look like planes, and used substitutes for normal safety procedures (flying low and slow rather than building a strong cockpit). He learned from many failures rather than spending months building to learn once.
Lesson: make sure you understand what the spec is really asking for, and prototype quickly around that.