Playing the role of Orville Wright, a 21st-century aviator will today try to re-enact the first powered human flight 100 years ago before a constellation of legendary fliers.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first men to walk on the moon, Chuck Yeager, the test pilot who first broke the sound barrier and John Glenn, one of the first and then the oldest astronaut, were among the pilots expected to join US President George W. Bush to mark the centennial of flight.
On a muddy field in Kill Devil Hills on North Carolina's Outer Banks, 42-year-old Mr Kevin Kochersberger will attempt to recreate the 12-second, 36-metre flight on December 17th, 1903, in a replica of the wood-and-muslin flying machine with which Orville and Wilbur Wright made history.
Mr Kochersberger, a flight instructor and an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology, was set to try the first flight at 3.35 Irish time, the same moment Orville Wright soared over the sand dunes 100 years earlier. Another attempt will be made later today before a crowd expected to number in the tens of thousands.
"We don't intend to go over 120 feet. We intend to keep the Wrights' record intact," Mr Kochersberger said.
Organisers are not certain that the replica Wright Flyer, a 274 kg biplane with a 12-metre wingspan and powered by a 12-horsepower gasoline engine, will fly.
The plane, with a top speed of just 30 mph 48 kph, crashed at least once in trials but flew on other occasions.