Given that the first Kitty Hawk flight managed to stay in the air only 12 seconds, I'm not about to discount the possibility that they did it because they "only" flew or 19.
The article notes that the flight was witnessed by "a Canadian official of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) - the body responsible for authenticating aviation records, first flights and the like"; presumably the FAI certified it as a genuine flight and not a glide -- if they have a website, that certification is probably there. If they didn't, I can't see why they would mention said official in the first paragraph.
As for your other points, maybe some of them will be addressed when they post the engineering details on their website, per the article. Until then, given that this is the result of a decades-long program at an engineering school (and not, say, some Joe Poutine working out of his basement), I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to control flights, air tunnel tests, and the other necessary minutiae of aircraft design.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
The article notes that the flight was witnessed by "a Canadian official of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) - the body responsible for authenticating aviation records, first flights and the like"; presumably the FAI certified it as a genuine flight and not a glide -- if they have a website, that certification is probably there. If they didn't, I can't see why they would mention said official in the first paragraph.
As for your other points, maybe some of them will be addressed when they post the engineering details on their website, per the article. Until then, given that this is the result of a decades-long program at an engineering school (and not, say, some Joe Poutine working out of his basement), I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to control flights, air tunnel tests, and the other necessary minutiae of aircraft design.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.