Fly Past (2001)

This 4-part documentary mini-series looks at key developments in powered flight. Two sets of brothers, working privately without government assistance, bookend the 20th century in the first episode, "The Wings of Man" - Orville and Wilbur Wright build and fly the first controllable powered aircraft, and Burt and Dick Rutan build and fly Voyager, the first aircraft to fly around the world nonstop without refueling. The second episode, "Straight Up", details the history of VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft, from Leonardo DaVinci's drawings, through Igor Sikorsky's invention of the helicopter, to the development of tilt-rotor and vectored-thrust machines such as the XV-15, V-22, Harrier, and the X-32/X-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The history of the "flying wing" is told in episode 3, "A Wing And A Prayer". Jack Northrop's brainchild loses out to the B-36 after World War II, but the low radar profile of the flying wing design makes a comeback decades later in the form of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. The 4th and final episode, "The Cutting Edge", explores future developments in aviation such as stealth technology, hypersonic flight, lifting bodies, solar power, remotely-piloted vehicles, and mini-spy-planes no bigger than an insect.