Yes. The challenge is exactly what it purports to be, a call to build a feat of aeronautical engineering, not to build something for practical use (which is impossible short of a breakthrough in lightweight materials). This should be seen as comparable to programming challenges for programs in 64k or x number of lines.
"On September 20, 1904, Wilbur flew the first complete circle in history by a manned heavier-than-air powered machine, covering 4,080 feet (1,244 m) in about a minute and a half."
I think the main issue limiting flight time is that the propulsion system uses pedaling to unwind a cord around the main shaft. When the cord is fully unwound, more pedaling does nothing. I think they do this because its lighter than using a gear transfer system.
If you are trying to win a challenge, it makes sense to optimize your solution for it. And fundamentally, it's just never going to be possible to make a human powered helicopter that is compact and can run for a whole. Hovering just requires too many RPM.
Did we add to the corpus of human knowledge from people trying to win the challenge? I'm guessing we got something for the $250,000 prize money. There are larger Kickstarter projects.
I'd say yes. Obviously it's not a challenge easily solved and thus requires custom engineering and creative solutions. It's probably not a breakthrough of epic proportions, but it certainly educated multiple teams of young engineers to explore novel solutions, something they'll maybe have good use for later. That's how it is with challenges - they may or may not have major impact on the body of knowledge, but they all add a little at least, pushing the envelope further (think: X-Price)
If they wanted something practical, they would have specified practical requirements (and then had nobody enter, because it would clearly be impossible).
As far as I understand it, the spirit of the challenge was to demonstrate that a human powered craft could take off vertically. Sustained human powered hovering is somewhat past that.
Apparently a lot of the aircrafts flying capability has to do with its proximity to the ground. I'm sure part (if not all) of the reason why the rotars almost touch the ground.
It seems that you're certainly right, they're not creating a fully functioning flying machine, they're building a challenge winner, and that's what they set out to do.
So what? Burt Rutan didn't build a spaceship, he built a X-prize-winning-machine. Is that a reason to deride his words?
In both cases, the people who set up the competition where perfectly aware of what they would get. Also, they were smart enough to make their challenge hard, but not impossible (some would argue Sikorsky set the target too high, as it took 30+ years to see a worthy challenger, but it is impossible to foresee how hard a problem is, and Gossamer Albatross had flown the channel in 1980. Also, Hilbert surely set some harder problems)
Seems like this isn't a helicopter, more a human-powered-helicopter-challenge-winning-machine.
I mean, if it can't fly for more than 90 seconds it might technically pass the requirements but is it in the spirit of the prize?