Every time I see this analogy, I wonder why people choose Kitty Hawk as the start date. Perhaps instead, they should treat Gagarin's flight as analogous to the

Every time I see this analogy, I wonder why people choose Kitty Hawk as the start date. Perhaps instead, they should treat Gagarin's flight as analogous to the flight of the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. The interval from the first manned balloon flight to the first airplane flight was 131 years, with decades of little apparent progress during that long time.