Largest-Ever Paper Airplane Takes Flight

Arturo Valdenegro, a 12-year-old Tucson resident, made paper aviators everywhere look minuscule by comparison last week. In the skies over the Sonora desert in Arizona, the Pima Air & Space Museum launched the biggest paper airplane ever constructed - a paper airplane based on Valdenegro's design - into the sky, accelerating it to speeds topping 100 miles per hour before it came crashing down.

The plane weighed 800 pounds and stretched 45 feet long with a 24-foot wingspan. The museum constructed it out of falcon board, a kind of corrugated cardboard, as part of its Giant Paper Airplane Project, the goal of which is to generate interest in aviation and engineering among young people.