No one has ever set the bar for the dream machine of aviation higher than Alexander Klemin did on April 26, 1938. Testifying at a Congressional committee hearing on "Development of the Autogiro and Rotary-Winged Aircraft," the renowned chairman of the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aeronautics at New York University said that "[t]he conquest of the air in its broadest sense will only come when we can do in the air substantially everything that a bird can do in the air." Three-quarters of a century later, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is preparing to announce which of four competing aircraft designers it thinks might come closest to fulfilling Klemin's vision. The winner will receive a $90 million contract to build and fly a technology demonstrator DARPA calls the Vertical Take-Off and Landing Experimental Aircraft, or VTOL X-Plane.
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机译：1938年4月26日，没人能像亚历山大·克莱敏（Alexander Klemin）那样为梦想中的航空器设定更高的标准。在国会委员会听证会上，著名的丹尼尔·古根海姆（Daniel Guggenheim）主席听取了“自动翼飞机和旋翼飞机的发展”报告。纽约大学航空学院说：“只有在我们可以在空中做得几乎是鸟类可以在空中做的所有事情时，才能从最广泛的意义上征服空中。”四分之三世纪之后，美国国防高级研究计划局（Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency）准备宣布其认为可能最接近实现Klemin愿景的四名竞争飞机设计师中的哪一位。获胜者将获得9000万美元的合同，用于建造和飞行技术演示器DARPA，称为垂直起降实验飞机或VTOL X-Plane。
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