I didn't mention previously only because I didn't know the following information had been made public. I commonly do this for OPSEC reasons. During my original conversation with Ingenuity Project Manager MiMi Aung and her joke about where was I at the concept stage, she admitted that team lacked rotary wing aeronautical design experience so they reached out to a local Southern California company, a specialty UAV developer, AeroVironment.
AeroVironment is a company that was started by Paul MacCready Jr. to develop specialty aircraft for R & D, and DoD contracts. At the very beginning, Paul would hire engineers that had extensive flying model aviation experience (as he himself did). Paul encouraged his workers to design and build models, and then "go outside and fly" their creations. AeroVironment still upholds that requirement today. I knew Paul when he was alive and would see him at least once a year at the annual Sailplane Homebuilders Association (now the Experimental Soaring Association) Western Workshop in Tehachapi, CA every Labor Day weekend.
For the past several week, all the news stories I came across about Ingenuity, had not mentioned AeroVironment. As the replies to this thread continue to grow, I performed an internet search to see if AeroVironment has been publicly acknowledge as the contractor that designed and built Ingenuity.
As for my previous question about my friend Jack Norris's book
PROPELLERS The First, and Final Explanation. I do know that a numer of engineers at AeroVironment have a copy of Jack's book, so it would be easy to summize that some of the information within would have been indeed referenced.
Wayne
AeroVironment’s team of innovative engineers from our MacCready Works Advanced Solutions team worked with NASA/JPL to design and develop a helicopter carried by the Mars rover, Perseverance. The helicopter's name is Ingenuity, and its purpose is to demonstrate the viability of aerial robots for...
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NASA's Ingenuity helicopter, which was carried to Mars by the Perseverance rover, is set for the first ever flight on the red planet. WSJ goes inside the company that partnered with NASA to design and build an aircraft for a completely different atmosphere from Earth. Photo: NASA/JPL
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