Question

Up until recently, the history of human powered flight has not improved much since the ancient Greeks write about Icarus

Answer 1

Icarus and his wings was a Greek Myth.  It portrayed a young man, Icarus, and his father, creating wings out of feathers and wax to escape imprisonment in Crete. Icarus did not heed his father's warning to stay away from the sun and did not comprehend that the wings would melt, because of the wax. The wax melted resulting in the death of young Icarus. 
     Today we have still not mastered the art of human flight. Inventors have created jetpacks and rocket belts to try and make the fantasy of human flight a reality. There are a few problems with both ideas, however. A jetpack can only lift a person between 30 and 35 feet in the air. They must also be powered by either a jet ski or boat. Both rocket belts and jetpacks have limited mobility and can only move forward, or side to side. Rocket belts and jetpacks also have very short flight times. If you run out of time, you will also perform "a death dive" and plummet to the ground or into the water! Humans still have a long way to go on being able to actually fly