First Human-Powered Ornithopter 250
spasm writes "A University of Toronto engineering graduate student has made and successfully flown a human-powered flapping-wing aircraft. From the article: 'Todd Reichert, a PhD candidate at the university's Institute of Aerospace Studies, piloted the wing-flapping aircraft, sustaining both altitude and airspeed for 19.3 seconds and covering a distance of 145 metres at an average speed of 25.6 kilometres per hour.'"
The Spice... (Score:5, Funny)
Just in time... (Score:5, Funny)
Just in time for Yueh to leave us a pair of stillsuits in the back. The article doesn't mention if it's big enough to lift a spice harvester however.
Oh a million deaths are not enough for Yueh!
Re:Just in time... (Score:4, Informative)
Iirc, the transport of harvesters where done by carry-all's.
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Abbot: Who gave the still suits?
Costello: Yueh gave the still suits.
Abbot: No I didn't.
Costello: Of course.
Abbot: Of course what?
Costello: Of course you didn't.
Abbot: Then who did?
Costello: Yueh did!
Awesome stuff, but it doesn't take off like a bird (Score:5, Informative)
The article doesn't make it clear that the aircraft still needs to be pulled for it to glide into the air (you can see this in the attached video). I was under the impression that it took off like a bird. The "flapping" of the wings is really cool to see though, once the craft gets airborne.
Either way, really neat.
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consider that most birds do give themselves a first start with their legs rather then wings. Hell, the swan basically runs like crazy before getting of the ground. And iirc, the wright brothers flier was pulled along a rail using a weight and pulley system to get enough speed. But once up to speed, the motorcycle engine was enough to keep it up there unless the pilot did something crazy.
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I was under the impression that it took off like a bird
It does take off like a bird; it takes off like a very big bird [wikipedia.org]. There are a couple of interesting sentences in that:
Albatrosses in calm seas are forced to rest on the ocean's surface until the wind picks up again.
When taking off, albatrosses need to take a run up to allow enough air to move under the wing to provide lift.
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> It does take off like a bird; it takes off like a very big bird.
Though big birds run to take off they do so under their own power. Maybe he needs to add leg holes?
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This is the FIRST FLIGHT of the FIRST PROTOTYPE built by a college student who further chose to pilot it himself rather than hiring a professional athlete (although he did train and even lose weight). If the first prototype of a software application you wrote in school was more impressive than that, we would love to hear of it. Otherwise tone down the skepticism. One day people might fly this as a sports/hobby thing after being boosted by a friend or a ski lift-type thingy or it would be a cool spy gadget y
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The human body has a max output of about 200 watts. About 1/4 HP. sustained flying is probably a pipe dream.
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I am sure that is before the addition of beans and broccoli. Think of it like nitro on a car.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_power [wikipedia.org]
tells the story nicely.
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I do actually hop im a glider and use various forms of lift to maintain flight.
Famous glider pilot and designer Paul McReady
desigend the aircraft below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross [wikipedia.org]
This was the most sucessful attempt at a human powered aircraft. It required 400w to maintain level flight. Powered by pdeals and a propellor,
it would be significantly more efficient than a wing flapping system, which produces large vorticies.
It was very fragile to acheive its 100KG auw and an encounter with eve
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Tell me how to build a full scale ornithopter that has room for a full wing-flap while grounded and still weighs little enough to get airborne, otherwise I'm just not impressed with your disappointment.
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Yeah, there's those french wind up flappy birds, I forget the name, but you had to throw those. What kind of landing gear did yours have that let them flap on the ground?
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You can open the login link in a new tab (or window, if that gets your fancy). Then when you preview/submit, you'll be logged in.
The things grad students will do... (Score:5, Funny)
On Ornithopters (Score:5, Funny)
Atreides, Paul Atreides
He's the greatest man in history
On the planet Arrakis
He'll kill Harkonnen and make the Fremen free
Re:On Ornithopters (Score:5, Funny)
I see you've bought into all the government propaganda about Paul Atreides.
FACT: Paul Atreides isn't a true Fremen. Why haven't we seen his birth certificate? I'll tell you why, he wasn't even born on Arrakis.
FACT: Paul Atreides is a secret Harkonnen. He cares more about loss of spice harvesting equipment than the lives of people. That doesn't sound like an Atreides to me.
FACT: Paul Atreides has a huge ego. He thinks he's some kind of messiah.
FACT: Paul Atreides's mother dabbles in witchcraft. She claims that she's no longer a witch, but do we really believe that?
FACT: Paul Atreides regularly cheats on his wife. The only reason he's still married is because it would hurt him politically to end the marriage.
Yeah, he makes big promises about making Arrakis more green, but what how can we trust him?
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Human-powered ornithopters? Sounds like Dune meets the Flintstones!
So, that makes Dino...a sandworm? "Daddy's home! No, Dino! Down, Dino, Do... "
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Ornithoglider (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ornithoglider (Score:5, Interesting)
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The flap is meant to produce thrust, not lift I would think. The cockpit moving up and down is just a question of Newtons 2nd law, it isn't really gaining altitude or losing altitude, just changing the center of mass. I would like to know, however, how far it can fly with flapping vs how far it can glide without. That would at least give some idea of how effective it is.
Another interesting question would be what kind of wattage the operator is putting out. Is it something the average human can do or did
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Good ones can continuously generate around 5W/kg: http://www.sportsscientists.com/2010/07/power-outputs-from-tour-de-france.html [sportsscientists.com]
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1W... really? You burn about 120 Calories per mile running, and a human in very good shape can reasonably run 10 mph for a long period of time. That's 1200 Calories per hour comes out to be just about 1400W. Now granted, you're body isn't going to be 100% efficient in converting that chemical energy to mechanical, but I would bet that it's at least 15%. Or if you don't trust math, go to a science museum where they have a 100W light bulb hooked up to a stationary bike and hop on, you might just surprise
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You don't even need to go anywhere. They sell crank-powered flashlight. I don't know how powerful the bulbs are, but the smallest flashlight bulb is at least two or three watts, and they only requires cranking about 1/4th of the time, with the rest going into a battery which isn't 100% efficient.
So if you can run a 3 watt bulb off fifteen seconds of cranking for 60 seconds, that's at minimum 12 watts, and probably more like 20 watts after you convert to batteries and back. While cranking a small crank, whi
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An ordinary cyclist (i.e. me) can easily produce 250 watts (a third of a horsepower). I know this because I got "volunteered" at college for a lab session. Given that I'm a bit of a bleb, I suspect a good cyclist can sustain that for a long time and/or produce considerably more over short periods.
I guess you're a 'Merkin, and therefore have either a) different units of measure or b) very different standards of fysical phatness.
The Internet: magical fact verifying machine (Score:5, Informative)
Do you remember when, back in the day, you could write or say anything about anything, no matter how uninformed you were, and if you communicated authoritatively enough, your audience would just eat it up with a spoon and not question you? Yeah, we have the Internet now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-powered_transport [wikipedia.org]
In the 1989 Race Across America, one team (Team Strawberry) [1] used an experimental device that consisted of a rear wheel hub, a sensor and a handlebar mounted processor. The device measured each cyclist's power output in watts. In lab experiments an average "in-shape" cyclist can produce about 3 watts/kg for more than an hour (e.g., around 200 watts for a 70 kg rider), with top amateurs producing 5 watts/kg and elite athletes achieving 6 watts/kg for similar lengths of time. Elite track sprint cyclists are able to attain an instantaneous maximum output of around 2,000 watts, or in excess of 25 watts/kg; elite road cyclists may produce 1,600 to 1,700 watts as an instantaneous maximum in their burst to the finish line at the end of a five-hour long road race.
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Do you remember when, back in the day, you could write or say anything about anything, no matter how uninformed you were, and if you communicated authoritatively enough, your audience would just eat it up with a spoon and not question you?
Yeah, back when I could put anything I wanted up on wikipedia, and people would cite it as authoritative truth without thinking twice about it.
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Seriously... You can't tell at all whether the flapping did anything productive at all. The plane is towed into the air for a fair distance, then appears to coast and land - towards the end there's a little bit of flapping that doesn't seem to do anything at all. I'm not sure what, exactly, this is supposed to display, because it certainly doesn't demonstrate to the public (through the video) that this particular flapping does anything.
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Birds have feathers on the wingtip that provide forward thrust on the down stroke.
Yes, the flapping is keeping it in the air (Score:5, Informative)
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Just speculating from a armchair, but i would guess that the problem is that the flapping is more vertical then horizontal.
Also, as the wing do not deform much on the up stroke, i will claim that it basically produce much the same force downwards as it did upwards on the down stroke. Birds and bats appears to collapse the wings on the upstroke to allow it to move into position with minimal drag, not unlike a person swimming butterfly strokes.
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From my looking at the videos it isn't obvious if the flapping is maintaining flight at all. This could be a glider that just happens to flap.
The frontal views use perspective to hide whether the plane's relative position to the ground is being distorted by the perspective aspects of travelling towards the camera. The video that shows the plane traveling away exaggerates the plane's descent due to a similar perspective induced distortion.
A camera consistently showing the plane from the side would be more
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Can you really tell from the video you can determine how long and far he could have flown without the "flapping wings". I would like to see a comparison of this machine with an ordinary glider launched with the same altitude and speed.
Or better yet, the same glider launched with the same altitude and speed, but without the flapping.
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Dune References (Score:2)
Flap or car? (Score:2)
Looks more like an automobile-powered flight to me. A car pulls it into the air, it flaps a few times and descends. That is human-powered, flapping flight? Sorry, doesn't impress me all that much.
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Maybe the video was chopped or something, it really didn't look like more than maybe 4 flaps or something and it was over. You are right, though, it looked pretty neat.
I can't imagine how much energy it would require to actually get something like that in the air WITHOUT assistance. I know *my* crappy body could never supply it!
Potential Customer (Score:4, Funny)
Potential Customer: Ryanair.
Not the first, by any means (Score:5, Informative)
This is not even close to the first human powered ornithopter. One of the most significant recent attempts is Yves Rousseau [wikipedia.org] who crashed and became a paraplegic as a result of one of his flights.
flapping wings while falling down slowly (Score:2)
This looked like the wings were flapping but the machine was slowly going down, not a single flap pushed it up.
This did not look like a flight, it looked like a delayed fall.
The phrase you're looking for is... (Score:3, Insightful)
...falling, with style. You might go so far as to call it a toy, just don't tell him that. He thinks he's going to save the universe.
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No, in flight you CAN gain altitude. Or are you arguing that a parachute is a form of transportation that's useful for more than just falling down in a controlled manner?
ornithopter? (Score:2)
Sure, it seems like a neat project now, but just wait until this guy swoops over Toronto and sounds the Panic Horn.
Not that great... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is merely a glider, nothing more. The up-flap cancels out the down-flap as the wings appear to move vertically. All winged animals I'm aware of either twist their wings at angles or fold them, especially on the up-flap, so that most of the powered force is directed to pushing air under the wings on the down flap and the wing simply cuts through the air on the up flap.
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Because surely just basing it on those videos you can judge the wing twist and such. LOL.
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University PR departments are usually below par, and sometimes they must be hiring people fired from tabloids, it seems.
No crap on a car windshield? (Score:5, Funny)
In order to win the Ornithopter X-Prize, you need to flap and stay in the air long enough to drop your pants, and take a crap on a car windshield.
Now that would really prove that man can build a machine that enables man to emulate bird behavior.
Nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
...we've had flapping-wing aircraft for three-quarters of a century.
Birds flap their wings with a painfully inefficient reciprocating motion, because nature doesn't know how to make one critical component: a rotating joint. We do, so our wing-flappers flap their wings with nice, efficient rotary motion...and we call them helicopters.
rj
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Lies! Helicopters stay up because they're so ugly they repel the ground.
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always wondered about bird vs. helicopter efficiency ... here's one guy's opinion.
http://mb-soft.com/public3/birdeff.html [mb-soft.com]
If true, nature's "painfully inefficient reciprocating motion" leaves our "nice, efficient rotary motion" in the dust.
Nothing to see here, move along (Score:2)
It reminded me two brothers who guarantees that have achieved the first flight of a heavier than air long time ago...
I think this is pretty cool (Score:2)
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you can. Because you want to. Just to show it can be done?
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:5, Funny)
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I guess you think ornithopters...
...are for the birds.
YYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
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Hrmm, its about to get a friend in new block, 1/1 walker for 0 colourless.
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking as this guy's former roommate, one of the draws for him was that the aerodynamics and mechanics of flapping wing flight was not fully understood.
The science here is understanding aerodynamics to the point that a human-scaled device can be built.
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Indeed. Next up: defenestration.
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:4, Funny)
Speaking as this guy's former roommate, one of the draws for him was that the aerodynamics and mechanics of flapping wing flight was not fully understood.
The science here is understanding aerodynamics to the point that a human-scaled device can be built.
I would like to see his paintings.
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Human powered flight will be necessary in the future because not everyone has oil and most people won't have access to petrochemicals to power their planes. However, flight consists of 3 aspects: take off, mid-flight manuevering, and landing safely
You forgot to mention useful, meaningful, range, payload and altitude.
The MIT Daedalus [wikipedia.org] managed 71 miles over calm spring Mediterranean waters at 15 to 30 feet.
The Daedalus had its fleet of marine escorts.
But the fundamental reason for building an aircraft is to
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:5, Interesting)
There you go, it ain't much, but then again creativity is a pretty expensive and scarce commodity.
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:5, Insightful)
Beyond the other answers, anything that can be powered by a human can be powered even better by a small inexpensive engine. This could easily result in an inexpensive personal recreational aircraft. Think Ultralights. Regardless, pure science is pure science. Even if this particular application never results in anything, he surely had to solve problems and understand principles that no one has ever worked out before. Parts of that research will have value somewhere.
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:5, Funny)
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What, like gliders which normally require a second aircraft to give it a lift? Even though not 'practical' they do fall into the range of affordable for enthusiasts.
Always one in every crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides the "gee-whiz" factor, why is time being spent on this sort of research? Will any flapping-wing aircraft ever be as efficient as a modern jumbo-jet for transporting large loads of cargo and people? I'm no aerospace engineer, and I'm not saying that a jet is the model of efficiency, but I don't see how a flappy wing mode of transport would be better.
Seriously, dude, if you ask questions like this, Slashdot is probably not the place for you.
P.S. Cynicism does not necessarily make you appear wise.
Re:Always one in every crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
One need not appear wise to whore karma.
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Besides the "gee-whiz" factor, why is time being spent on this sort of research? Will any flapping-wing aircraft ever be as efficient as a modern jumbo-jet for transporting large loads of cargo and people? I'm no aerospace engineer, and I'm not saying that a jet is the model of efficiency, but I don't see how a flappy wing mode of transport would be better.
People like you make me happy that I don't have to get the permission of some overarching governing body before I try something new. I would not call myself artistically inclined, but I'm quite willing to acknowledge that not everything has to have a simple survival or economic purpose.
Switch hats plz (Score:2)
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:5, Funny)
What I want to know is why it's always college kids who are doing the cool stuff in /. stories. It really sends the wrong message that centers of elitist liberal brainwashing are somehow related to innovation when we all know that it's the hardworking, individualistic, ambitious types upon whom all progress depends.
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Just off the top of my head, it should provide slower air speeds without the issues of a rotary wing aircraft.
When you can't imagine an application, and you admit to being outside of your field, perhaps discretion (instead of discredit) is the best policy. I'm no aerospace engineer either, but it is easy to see how this could develop into lightweight planes with long flight times and limited ranges. Ideal for local city traffic reporting, if you think about it. Perhaps you could even put a cell phone rep
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Are you serious?
Do you really not want to fly in a one-man flapping wing aircraft?
Can you really watch that video without getting tingles down your spine?
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The wing flapping motion is quite striking to watch, I'll admit, and it is very cool that they have constructed something on this scale, but I was somehow expecting more based on the description in the article.
While I'm still skeptical of the widespread practical use of this mode of flight, I applaud the creativity and technical genius that must have gone
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Two reasons I can see
1. An ornithopter is really the only practical aircraft on Mars
2. Human powered fuelless flight for when the oil dries up.
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> An ornithopter is really the only practical aircraft on Mars
Why?
> Human powered fuelless flight for when the oil dries up.
Human powered propeller-driven flight is more efficient but still not practical. Aircraft with alcohol burning engines would be more efficient. People are extremely inefficient engines.
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, stop propagating an urban legend originated in 1934. Nobody said that bees can't fly, they said that an airplane wing traveling at the speed of a bee can't fly. Airplane wings needed more laminar air flow to generate lift according to Bernoulli's principle, and that means more forward speed to generate the minimal air flow than a bee displays in it's forward flight.
Then the anti-science crowd then created a misinterpretation of this famous statement to read that "according to Science, bees can't fly" so it must be "God's work." Later it was softened to "According to science, bees can't fly so we don't know everything."
It doesn't take a lot of insight to imagine how flapping a wing can sustain slower air speeds than a fixed wing aircraft could sustain. But the original findings have been so misused, that using the quote is paramount to spreading anti-Science propaganda.
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Ahem, Laminar flow is NOT neccesary to generate lift, turbulent flow does too, it just produces higher drag in the process.
In fact modern sailplanes deliberately turbulate laminar flow where a laminar seperation bubble might form, which causes more drag than turbulent flow. Airfoils are desidned very carefully to control the transistion between laminar and turbulent flows.
What I think you are confusing is streamilned flow and laminar flow.
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That's very easy to say in hindsight. Let's keep in mind it took a good 60 years for someone to improve upon our understanding of insect flight... Until that time, nobody could explain how bees were able to sustain flight.
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Neither will denying facts make them false. You can blindly deny our incomplete knowledge all you want, but it makes you look like the idiot...
Okay, how's this:
"the performance of insect wings, when tested under steady conditions in wind tu
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Well if you're looking for the rapport, perhaps you can't find it because it's called a report.
Let's spend a second and take a look [lmgtfy.com]. First link! It seems that it's not all in the weight after all. Man, it is hard to find information these days, perhaps that's why you were under this bee delusion for so long.
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they should not be able to fly if the current laws of psychics were correct
Indeed, I have yet to come across a true psychic [wikipedia.org] who will permit a bee to fly.
That's because I am fucking hansom and sexy :)
You're having intimate relations with a Horse and cab [wikipedia.org]?
Please consider spelling things correctly when you debate more academic issues. It makes it difficult for people to agree with your arguments when there're missing or clanged letters all over the place.
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Airplane: relative wind over a curved airfoil (the wing) generates lift, and the airplane lifts into the air.
Helicopter: relative wind over a curved airfoil (the rotor blade) generates lift, and the helicopter lifts into the air.
There are several differences in capability based upon the method in which the relative wind is generated, and there are several differences in control problems that must be overcome
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:5, Informative)
Bees would violate the laws of aerodynamics for fixed wing airplanes. Fortunately for them they operate more like a helicopter and get more sufficient lift by beating their wings. Do people still seriously believe this?
Speaking as someone with experience with Helicopters. Designing those damned things is more an art that is reinforced by scientific knowledge. There are a lot of things about rotor aircraft that until recently have been way too complex to model. So in a manner of speaking, we did not know the aerodynamics of bees if you set your definition of know to be an exhaustive knowledge of the physics.
A rotor spinning in place you could model, but add in any bit of wind current and motion and it became an aerodynamic mess.
Re:Why Still Pursuing This? (Score:5, Funny)
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A popular military joke is that the CH-47 Chinook doesn't fly, it just beats the air into submission.
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There are a lot of things about rotor aircraft that until recently have been way too complex to model.
How recently? Are we due for a big advance in rotorcraft in the near future due to new understanding, or is this a "we finally know why aspirin works" kind of discovery?
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Fotunately, the laws of "psychics" are not correct. For that matter, I'm not aware of any laws regulating psychics at all. Perhaps laws against witchcraft apply?
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They had an official there witnessing the flight, so I'm sure the appropriate definition of powered flight will have been taken into consideration.
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The human body is much more powerful pushing with the legs / pulling with the arms.Given it looks like the "push" pulls the wingtips towards the ground and airframe weight / air flow pulls the wingtips back up, the "pull" would only serve to increase weight (additional linkage, or linkage capable of tension and compression) with little gain in power. However, I fail to see how a rowing machine would capture much energy on the reverse stroke comparative to the normal power stroke.