http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKLa6TGDzxI&feature=youtu.be
How fast can a mechanical dragon move?
For the student engineers working on it, the dragon is in the details.
“It’s really a lot of the different things that have gone wrong have been ‘we have to mount this, but this is in the way…how are we gonna be able to figure this out?’”
Emalie Wilka is a senior studying mechanical engineering at NMSU.
So is Miles Buster.
“When you get a dragon head this big….it starts to change the engineering…when you get a whole lot of stuff on it, then it can’t lift as much and so there’s a ton of engineering that went into this piece right here.”
Along with other engineering students, they spent countless hours working on Magellan, the dragon.
It might be ready for the Renaissance Faire held every year at Young Park, but it might not.
Local artist Bob Diven is the creative mind behind the old Magellan and the new one.
“I don’t think it’s gonna quite make it…very large very complex”
Last year the old dragon was out of commission. Director of the Dona Ana Arts Council, Kathleen Albers, is proud of what students have accomplished so far.
“They’ll get to see the work in progress…. students are working right down to the wire. They’re gonna put their best effort forward…if it’s not quite there, then we’ll have the in-progress version at the fair.”
For Bob Diven, this year’s more ambitious - and more mechanical - Magellan is still about making use of what we have.
“I began to think about the lake…and we hadn’t done anything to utilize this lake,” said Diven.
What future engineers have is a window into the real world of deadlines and sometimes, delays.
"A lot of the time, you can design anything come to life…very helpful I think,” said Wilka.