Staruk is a 22-year-old aerospace engineering graduate student at the University of Maryland from Worcester, Mass. He is part of a team of 50 engineering students who built a lightweight human-powered helicopter named Gamera, and launched it for four seconds on Thursday. The students think they may have set a world record for human-powered helicopter flight. But they fell short of winning a $250,000 prize from the American Helicopter Society. Tell me how long has your team been working on the project and how did the idea come about?
This project has been going on for a few years — three years. [Engineering school Dean Darryll Pines] had heard about the Sikorsky Prize, which was offered decades ago, and thought if anyone can do it, Maryland can. So we decided to take a shot at it.
