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Mechanical Butterflies?
MImeKillEr writes "According to an article on BBC News, two researchers from Oxford took highspeed photographs of an Admiral butterfly in a specially-designed windtunnel to study how butterflies fly. The resulting research brings insight into small-scale flight dynamics. Although the article doesn't give an ETA on this, they expect to be able to build an aircraft with a 10cm wingspan that will be either autonomous or radio controlled. This will allow them to be used in rescue missions, cave exploration and possibly even on Mars."
I could see this having a potential weapons use in distributing toxins/sedatives... oh yea... first post...
If you could put cameras on these things they would be great for espionage. I imagine the military would love to see some tiny radio controlled flying vehicles with video capture capability.
you can take the road that takes you to the stars...
I feel proud to know my taxes are once again being spent on something useful... I notice they used smoke to spot the airflow, I hope the butterflies were consulted first on breathing 2nd hand smoke or we could be in for some costly litigation in a few years time!
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
...if the MSN marketroids ever got their hands on this technology...arrgh the butterflies...they're everywhere...
Ceci n'est pas une
... two researchers took highspeed photographs of a pig in a specially-designed windtunnel to study how pigs fly. This will allow them to be used in rescue missions, cave exploration and possibly even on Mars.
how come i cant put things in these "" kind of parenthesis ? my :> smilies vanish too.
funniest thing I saw
but really hard to fly : planes with flapping wings
this technology is today where fixed wing tech war one century ago (ie a few hundred meters flight at 2 or 3 meters altitude)
www.ornithopter.net/
I mean sure cool you can fly a littly x10 butterfly up to look in your neighbours windows but if it can only stay there for a minute, whats the point?
--
nich
37 - what does it stand for really...
and possibly, terrorism. and possibly Big Brother's lil Helpers, and possibly a pest to native birds who try to eat them.
What a world we live in!
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
We are planning to send a fleet of mechanical butterflies to mars...
Good morning slashdot!
y0, check it.
There was this episode of Earth Final Conflict that had these weirdo mechanical butterflies in it.
That's it. WORD.
I can own my own Thropter ... Arrakis here i come !
Although the west assures the world that butterfly aircraft will be used for exploritory purposes, iraq believes that the butterflies will be used for offensive purposes...
They have responded by ordering several large nets.
.Got to get facts straightened out.
on a side note. Lets attack Mars.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
The butterfly has had hundreds of millions of years to develop it's flight model. It's just not as simple as 'wings shaped like this, that flap like this'. It's about the finely tuned control mechanisim (in this case, butterfly brain) that controls the speed, angle, force, curvature etc, of the wings that counts.
This reminds me of people who keep insisting Moores Law will deliver us a smart computer soon. I could wait forever, but hyper threading technology is never going to say something smart.
It also reminds me of a joke; What's the last thing that goes through a bugs mind as it hits a windshield? It's ass.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Ever read Stanislav Lem's "Peace on Earth"?
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
God how much I'm delighted to hear about this.
I take a look at the science fiction books that I read years back and I look at now. Soon my favorite science fiction books will become not just speculation, but reality. Things like mechanical butterflies aren't something to be scoffed at like I assume some will, but something to be hailed.
I yearn for the days that these little mettalic insects can be seen fluttering in flocks towards fires or car accidents, offering those minded to it a warning of danger or peril.
I feel good right now, the technologically advanced world I want for my children could be at hand sooner than I thought.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
Hope the real life ones won't like burrowing into human flesh. The E:FC version did.
Oh, right, the military! This is exactly what I thought when I read about "tiny radio controlled flying vehicles with video capture capability." I surely can't see any better uses for them. (Who said I do?!)
root@aio:~# nmap -sX -iR -p1- # Ho, ho, ho! Merry Xmas, everyone!
In the atmosphere of Mars, the are only 1.5% the molecules we have. The composition is also evry different, but the point is: it's _very_ thin. OTOH, the gravity on Mars is about 38% of Earth's gravity.
So if you have something that flies on Earth, it's still a long way to go until you get it to fly on Mars.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
I can just picture it now! Saddam, in his palace being chased around by a tiny poisone-tipped mechanical butterfly while his moustache touting combat clad generals try to take it out with US supplied 'sidewinder swatters'
If you aren't careful; I'll gather a bunch of Russian jokes and net them into a GIANT Beowulf Cluster, in order to exact a fitting revenge.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
...a world where MSN did this, and geeks rushed to become mechanical Lepidoptera experts, running around with nets trying to catch these things and hack them (load linux, perhaps?) for their own use. I can imagine MSN suddenly thinking this was not such a bright idea...
Godzilla vs. Mechamothra!!!
Did anyone else, while reading "Admiral butterfly," imagine Steve Ballmer in MSN butterfly suit dancing on the stage? My God, this is not a nice thing to imagine while reading about technology, which can be a voyeurism breakthrough...
root@aio:~# nmap -sX -iR -p1- # Ho, ho, ho! Merry Xmas, everyone!
Tiny machines that fly like insects will soon be a reality. That is the confident prediction of scientists who have just studied the remarkable aerobatics of the butterfly. There is a lot of interest in this sort of thing from toy manufacturers Dr Adrian LR Thomas The two Oxford researchers put red admirals in a specially designed wind tunnel and used high-speed cameras to analyse how the animals moved through the air. The results of the experiments, they say, represent a major advance in our understanding of flight mechanics on the small scale, and will be invaluable to engineers trying to build "micro air vehicles". "There is a lot of interest in this sort of thing from toy manufacturers and, of course, the military," Dr Adrian LR Thomas told BBC News Online. "We are now moving in the direction where we will soon be able to build 10-centimetre-wingspan aircraft, either radio controlled or autonomous. "They would make an entertaining toy but if you put a camera on them then the [security agencies] could send them into small spaces such as caves to see what was going on." Effortless switch Red admiral, Adrian LR Thomas Wisps of smoke were blown over the wings Dr Thomas has spent 12 years studying insect aerodynamics. The wind tunnel used in the butterfly experiments took three years to construct and fine tune. With help of Dr Robert Srygley, red admirals (Vanessa atalanta) were trained to fly freely to and from artificial flowers in the tunnel. Wisps of smoke were blown over the insects' wings to see how they interacted with the air. The visible turbulence was caught on an ultra-fast digital camera. "The fluttering of butterflies is not a random, erratic wandering, but results from the mastery of a wide array of aerodynamic mechanisms," Srygley and Thomas report in the journal Nature. They identified six different ways the butterflies flapped and rotated their wings to stay airborne. The insects moved effortlessly through the different mechanisms "much like a horse might switch between walking, trotting and galloping depending on what it wanted to do," Dr Thomas said. BBCi Nature Click here for facts about red admirals Much to learn The researchers found the insects could, at times, fly very efficiently, producing very little turbulence. On other occasions, the red admirals' wings deliberately created vortices to achieve extra lift. "We saw conventional aircraft-style aerodynamics, two different kinds of leading-edge vortices, rotational mechanisms, wake-capture mechanisms and the so-called clap and fling." It is known that insect wings produce 10 times the amount of lift achieved by aircraft wings (per unit of area). Building tiny planes that were just scaled-down versions of the real thing would never get off the ground. It is only by mimicking the insect world that micro air vehicles will get airborne efficiently. And while miniaturisation experiments are progressing fast, engineers confess they still have much to learn from the animal world.
Put identity in the browser.
probably knot.
Combine the Tornado in a can with this and you'll have the Quantum Butterfly.
So is anyone else here in the States concerned that there might be a growing gap in clap and fling technology?
Inventor of the LOLbalrog meme.
Remembering the chaos theory description of the wide reaching potential of tiny effects:
:-)
Do we now have robotic weather control ?
Will meteorology profit from mechanical butterflies?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Send a massive swarm out that all broadcast back small pieces of the scene from different angles. All of the physical location data is combined with the video, a computer back at "base" assembles it all into a 3D VR world.
Then you as a participant ("butterfly tamer" ?)could control the swarm, and as you moved through VR space, the butterflies would move through physical space to try to build up the detail of image necessary for what you're looking at.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
See the synopsis of the episode of Earth: Final Conflict
The atmosphere on Mars is extremely thin --- Any mechanical butterfly you could put there would likely fall out of the sky and flail around on the ground within seconds. It aint Earth, kids.
Bowie J. Poag
You just said "crap"
Post links to Slashdot that usally have to guyz in them
When things develop through evolution it tends to be by a series of small changes, each representing no improvement or a small improvement. This means that although evolution over a long time tends towards a working solution, it doesn't always tend to the best (most efficient) solution. The structure of your eye is a case in point - the blood supply lies in front of the light sensitive cells of the retina.
What may be useful is that the process can find non-intuitive solutions to problems and there is a built in robustness to what emerges. Random variation has to have a wider tightrope to walk or any deviation from the norm would be fatal. Complex evolved systems also tend to have a built in redundancy as they grow out of similar and simpler systems which become interrelated.
Slashdotters may remember a report a year or so old about an evolving robot which developed dragonfly-like flight. Why take a pattern found in nature (photographic the butterfly) and try to work out how it works when you can evolve it directly with a learning system? If you're going to ape evolved systems it seems much more sensible (and easier) to me to ape the process rather than the result.
step 1: imitate butterfly with mechanical construct. flight control surfaces, microcontrollers, servomotors, radio transmitter, camera, and power supply all have to be contained in a tiny plastic thorax and made light enough to fly
step 2: ???
step 3: profit!!
from Dune.
Again, reality imitates (science) fiction. Nice!
Sigged!
1. Create mechanical butterfly robots
2.
3. Profit!
Does mars even have the sort of atmosphere that these things could fly in?
The experiment was in fact a success.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
that I know of is this guy, the L'il Skeeter.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Sounds cool! Presumably the longer a swarm stays in one place, the better your resolution is likely to get....
F lockin g/FlockingIndex.htm
t ml
Links to AI flocking behaviour resources which might be of interest....
Oxford Uni:
http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/~sumpter/
Craig Reynolds (early boid work):
http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/
Manchester Uni:
http://www.eng.man.ac.uk/Aero/wjc/Research/
US Airforce:
http://www.vs.afrl.af.mil/News/99-23.h
check out this video of a manned full-sized ornithopter. It looks to me like alot of effort is going into not alot of lift/thrust.
i nd ex.html
Looks like it's a bit of a wild ride n'all
http://www.ornithopter.net/MediaGallery/Videos/
Actually, Tom Swift (I'm pretty sure it was Tom Swift) did it, about 2 decades ago. Except it was a tiny robotic dragonfly. Nominally good Sci-Fi, creating a new technology and then exploring the implications of it. Can't remember the title of the book but I'm sure some other geekly folks here also read the story.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I first started seeing them on fark around a year ago. Fark is known for dragging cliches out to the their very deadest. I believe this is just one of those pop culture cliches.
In soviet Russia the Russian jokes net YOU into a giant Beowulf Cluster!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The big reason that the flight system of a butterfly works so well (hummingbird too) is that the wings have a relatively large surface area, and the overall mass of the system, the butterfly, is low compared to the lift force it can generate.
The problem is, a butterfly uses quite a bit of energy (relative to its size) to keep itself aloft. Unless we have a reliable way to generate a proportional amount of energy while keeping the power source light enough, we won't be able to simulate the flight of a butterfly.
Honestly, I think we should stick to planes for a while. We've got enough trouble keeping them in the air and running on time; best not muck it up by throwing butterflies in the mix.
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
I blame fark.com
How are we going to deploy these things on Mars? Surely, it would take about 500 years for one to fly there (assuming it could store enough fuel of some type). Until we can land a probe, I'll assume this to be the method of transit. ;)
-- jimmycarter
They'll just get swallowed up by some larger company.
Probably one that makes mechanized predatory birds.
Okay, so my question is how one could possibly power a mechanical butterfly. Living butterflies subsist on nectar; it's high energy, but they still need a massive daily intake. So, it seems like powering a butterfly would require a super-light-weight battery with long life and high output. Photovoltaic wings might work, but then it couldn't fly at night. Any thoughts on other sources of power? Superconducting monofilament extension cords?
And incidentally, the article says that insect wings get 10 times as much lift as airfoils. Presumably, that's for airfoils moving at the speed of insects. Has anyone found a way to test this with a butterfly moving the speed of a jet plane? I'm curious if the proportion holds true at all speeds, or if the ratio collapses as speed increases.
RC in caves is a ludicrous concept, save for line of sight, but then, why bother. Cave radios work with really looooowwwwww frequencies and require rather large coil antennas to transmit through all that rock. Cave radios are pretty finicky too. This is why cave rescue organizations (good ones) have the ability to lay a mile or two of phone wire in really horrible conditions.
RC butterflies or RC anything-else just ain't gonna happen in a cave.
A few people have suggested the military applications for these robotic butterflies, particularly in the area of espionage. The problem is this: butterflies make terrible spies, because everyone notices them!
How many times have you heard someone say, "look at the pretty horsefly on the windowsill"? Eh, never right? But we notice butterflies, because they are beautiful and elegant. In fact, of all of the insects around, I'd say butterflies are the ones most likely to be noticed, picked up, and examined because they are colorful and generally harmless. Well, that's probably the last thing you want, someone picking up your robot spy. "Hey, this butterfly has a resistor soldered to it's back..."
So the idea of making a robotic butterfly spy is probably not workable. Maybe a robotic cockroach spy..? Never mind, they'd just get stomped on sight. That might just be the real problem, trying to find an insect that wouldn't provoke interest, either positive or negative.
This research should be of interest to those developing the RoboFly, currently under development, with a grant from the US military, for reconnaissance missions. It weighs a tenth of a gram, is only slightly larger than a fly, has a tiny camera, and solar-panels that power two tiny motors, which in turn power razor-thin polyester wings that allow it to fly in relatively still air. A working model is expected to be completed by the end of next year.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
One of the ideas kicked around for the 1992 "Godzilla vs. Mothra" was killing off Mothra, and resurrecting her as a dragonfly mecha. The dragonfly Mothra did actually appear in "Rebirth of Mothra 2" as Aqua Mothra. And while the mecha has never appeared on screen, Armored Mothra appeared in "Mothra 3", with sword blades on the forward edges of her wings that worked very nicely to slice and dice King Ghidora.
Since the 90s, Mothra marrionettes have included robotics. If you watch the "making of" for GMK, you can see them build Mothra and the suits, and test the robotic Mothra and the robotic heads. Godzilla's head was especially impressive: it could roll and blink its eyes, shake its head and bare its teeth. The soft latex "skin" was moved by robotic "muscles" underneath. Also, Godzilla could breath.
Would someone kindly photograph an Atlas moth (a large Malaysian moth with the same orange stripped body as Mothra) in that gizmo and send the results to Toho? Mothra would appreciate that very much.
"It's a miracle! The sea water has once again created new life."
Moll, "Rebirth of Mothra 2"
The new "Godzilla X Mechagodzilla" will be opening in Japanese theaters on December 14th.
they can experiment with butterflies flying through a tornado in a can! Look at em go! What I really want is my 10cm remote-controlled jellyfish...
It's just a plan for Meterological Weapons (Weapons of Meterorological Destruction).
If you get a large group of gigantic[1] butterflies flapping their wings on one side of the planet, can you imagine the havoc it would create on the other side of the planet. Hurricanes, Whirlwinds and Typhoons at the drop of a hat (or flap of a wing).
[1] Gigantic on the butterfly scale of things.
In Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy, the professor builds a life-sized dragon fly that is flown by remote control. It had eyes and ears, and he thought of using it for exploring. Danny Dunn ends up destroying it, and the professor's notes, when the government develops an interest in using it for spying on people.
Did anybody else on Slashdot read the Danny Dunn books when they were children? His mother is the housekeeper for Professor Bullfinch, and they have all sorts of adventures that are, for the most part, scientifically possible, at least sort of. Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine featured a computer called MINIAC.
I tend to think of the Danny Dunn books as being the geek's version of the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew, except that they're good.
Danny Dunn had a dragonfly made out of super light and tough plastic propelled by jets of air, and eyes that were hooked up to a helmet you put over your head. The helmet gave you a 280+/- degree view of your surroundings, and allowed you to hear what was going on in the vicinity. It was completely immersive and seamless to the user. (VR!)
Pretty cool for 50s-early 60's tech. :)
Or, much more likely, espionnage and assassination. Idealists.
Wah!
"This will allow them to be used in rescue missions, cave exploration and possibly even on Mars."
Or by microsoft for advertising purposes!
This will allow them to be used in rescue missions
How many butterflies does it take to pry open the door of an automobile and lift the occupant to safety? How many to put out a house fire? Or rescue a downing person swept away in a flood? Or locate an Altzheimer's patient who has wandered away from home?
That's what I thought.
It's interesting research, but lets not blow this out of proportion or set unrealistic expectations by exaggerating the usefulness of the (proposed) technology.
Who is it this week? I've been avoiding the propag^H^H^H^H^H^H news lately...
Reminds me of when I was stationed in Okinawa in 1993. There were dragonflies buzzing around everywhere. I mean ALOT of dragonflies. I swore to myself that it was probably some miniaturized Japanese robotic insect that they were using to spy on the base. Of course that could have been dehydration because it was so damn hot and humid there, which isn't helped much by the high tech, heat absorbing camouflage utility uniform.
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
They have air on mars now?
Hrm... I thought up a cool way to save banwidth by using javascript for layout. perhaps one day it could be used on mars!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Hmmm. Better design specs for a whisper quiet ornithopter... What is an Ornithopter? Well for you non-frank-herbert reading people here (ooops thats not possible unless your a n00b...) http://www.ornithopter.org/flapflight/home.html Humbug you say? One was built however... http://www.ornithopter.net/MediaGallery/Videos/ind ex.html
It did get off the ground somewhat...
-Don't know if it's been slashdotted before...
But of course somethings would never get off the ground...
http://www.ornithopterpilot.com/images/AN45e2b.gif
Besides you can't really carry any weapons on the thing and the radar sig is too fricking huge... A butterfly's body is tiny yet the wings are huge...
Funniest quote on /. in ages.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
This is so much like the book PREY, you just need to add a little memory, make it run on solar energy and not long before these butteflies start evolving by themselves.
1. make mechanical butterflies
2. import cheap beowulf clusters from soviet russia
3. invade mars
4. ???
5. PROFIT!
they expect to be able to build an aircraft with a 10cm wingspan that will be either autonomous or radio controlled. This will allow them to be used in rescue missions, cave exploration and possibly even on Mars.
I can see it now - a 10cm-wingspanned aircraft to lift CowboyNeal from the depths of a Martian cave.
I haven't been there in several years, but one of the things I always loved was that in the video you watch whilst waiting in the lobby, there was a fantastic shot of a person touching a butterfly that - upon close examination - was actually a robot (i.e. by the cyberdyne corp. in the video).
Of course, I'm also having a vision of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, not so much because he mentioned robot butterflies (he didn't, in fact) but just the general concept he had of nano-tech gardens.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Trust me, this research is not about cave exploration.
Nobody suspects the butterfly!!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHA
First of all, the cost of such a thing probably outwieghs the usefulness. Do we really need robotic butterflies on Mars? Alien species are going to look at Earthlings as odd little morons. Next, if you put these things in caves and such (anywhere out in the wilderness), what is to stop other animals/insects from attempting to eat them? This just sounds like it will fail, the same as when they tried to build robot ants (because ants can lift 50x their body weight, so they figured they would be great for construction, etc).
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Here's a link to it: http://www.cosmiverse.com/space12030102.html
It also explains how the thin atmosphere of Mars actually works to help their design of a flapping winged robot.
I used to have a good sig...
Very soon there will be nowhere to hide, as flying/airborne networks of 'bugs' with full audio-visual capability will be all over, indoors and out, in due time. There's no way to stop this and I'm not saying we should try, but it will make life 'interesting' in ways we can barely conceive of right now.
Mosquito nets, repellant and bugspray will take on new meanings in the not-too-distant future.
**>>BELCH
I'll be more impressed when I see a mechanical flying bumblebee.
So ... we do not have to rely on those butterlfies in Tokio to influence our weather ... we can do it our selfs now?
As opposed to me sitting in the thing flying it? I can't think of any other way to control a fake butterfly. By the way I am going to press the submit button by either keyboard or mouse.
it's not fark you tools, it's somethingawful.com, just like anything else original. fark is just a stupid piece of shit.
PS - it's really Yakov Smirnov
Reminds me of what I saw at Universal Studios. First, they make robotic butterflies, then robotic arms to tuck your kids in at night, then large robot soldiers, and finally Skynet.
The mechanics of insect flight have been a topic of intense research for at least 30 years, because it seems to defy our preconceived notions about aerodynamics.
As far as weaponization, I can say without a doubt that the U.S. Gov't is interested. While my wife was doing her undergrad in Mechanical Engineering at Vanderbilt U.; her senior project was working on a DARPA funded research project into developing mechanical dragonflies which had the ability to carry micro-sized observation equipment and sensors and transmit this data back to a command center. The PI for this project had an office on campus, and another one in the Pentagon, and split his time fairly evenly between the two - so this wasn't something the gov't cut a check for and then forgot about it.
Now, before anyone CC's this to AG Ashcroft (talk about getting modded down!); this is all public domain information. What probably would be classified is if they were able to ever put any of that research to use; which I don't know.
Need a simple, easy to use data tier generator? http://www.gryphinsoftware.com/
So let me get this straight...NASA is considering sendng Iron Butterfly to Mars? Quite frankly, I think until we get the issue of the boy bands booked on one way trips resolved, we shouldn't worry about sending these guys.
Although In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida would make for much cooler space music than Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
Insted of "wasting" our precious time on finding a new fuel source...
We should be making tiny mind control units to affix to the current butterfly population!
-G
Reminds me of something I saw on PBS before, these two guys were super gluing house flies to very small balsa wood planes, it was very cool, the flies were actually able to pull the planes along, and they flew very well. This is the closest thing I could find after a quick search:
http://www.flypower.com/
The Martian Chronicles (February 2000, experience not real: Simulated in X-Plane only)
NASA has very exact data on the atmospheric pressure, density, and temperature on Mars.
NASA has very exact data on the gravity of Mars.
NASA has rough topographic maps for the entire planet of Mars, and very detailed data for some areas.
The laws of physics, which are programmed into X-Plane, are the exactly the same on Earth as on Mars.
X-Plane needs atmospheric pressure, density, temperature, gravity, and topographic maps to deliver an engineering-accurate flight simulation.
Enter a new level of flight simulation. X-Plane can simulate Mars.
The following is an email sent by Austin Meyer, author of X-Plane, to the X-Plane community, at 4:35 AM, February 24, 2000:
I DID POSSIBLY THE MOST EXCITING THING I HAVE EVER DONE TONIGHT. (OK, technically I finished it THIS MORNING). As some of you may know, I have been gathering data on Martian atmosphere, gravity, surface "texture", and topography for X-Plane from various NASA sites (http://ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mola.html, for example)
I do NOT yet have the TOPOGRAPHY for Mars, but I DO have everything else, and I have gotten it all entered into X-Plane and designed two planes to fly on Mars as well, and have been experimenting with deign and flight on Mars for the last 6 hours or so. (Could I be the first human to fly a real-time flight simulaton of Mars? I have seen many "movies" of "flying" over Mars terrain, but NONE have been hooked to an actual realistic FLIGHT MODEL... has NASA done a REAL-TIME simulation of Mars flight in a PILOTED aircraft? Has ANYONE?) Well, I have for the last 6 hours, AND IT IS FRIGGIN FASCINATING.
First of all, the atmosphere is ONE PERCENT as thick on Mars as it is on earth... INDICATED airspeed is proportional the the square root of the air density, so the INDICATED airspeed is ONE TENTH the true airspeed.
The result? If you take off with 60 knots on the airspeed indicator, your REAL speed is SIX HUNDRED KNOTS! (about Mach 1) Take it from me, Mach-1 takeoffs are quite a thing to behold, when the plane will barely leave the runway at that speed.
While there is almost no AIR for you, you do have the (sort of) advantage of only about ONE THIRD the GRAVITY, so it is three time easier to get airborne!
Result? A take-off in a well-designed airplane can occurr at a "mere" 400 knots or so, indicating all of 40 knots on the airspeed indicator!
Sound easy? IT ISN'T, BECAUSE WHILE YOUR GRAVITY (WEIGHT) IS ONLY ONE-THIRD OF EARTH'S, YOUR ==>INERTIAPARACHUTE? NOPE!!!! 400 mph is only 40 mph worth of drag due to the thin air. You will run off the end of the runway going 100 mph with the chute only "seeing" 10 mph: USELESS for slowing down
->BRAKES? NOPE!!! You only have one-third gravity, so only 1/3 of your weight on the wheels. NO TRACTION!
->Reverse thrust? NOPE!!!! With only 1% atmosphere, jet or prop engines can put out basically no thrust... just barely enough to keep the airplane in flight at mach-0.85.. the jet plane needs a JATO to take off!
So how do you stop? I finally went with ARRESTING GEAR. I know of no other way to avoid blasting off the end of the runway at 200 knots with the chute uselessy deployed and brakes uselessly locked.
Speaking of which, CRASHES are interesting. No air drag to slow the tumbling planes down, and little gravity to drag them to a stop against the ground! Crashes look like "the Agony of Defeat" from the Olympics where the guy on the downhill ski-jump bites it near the top of the ramp and tumbles on and on and on, powerless to stop an accident that started hundreds of yards earlier! (though on mars, at 400 mph, your plane will tumble across the plains for MILES!)
CRUISING ALONG OVER MARS is SPECTACULAR, with the scary red-orange Martian sky, new Martian rocky-red terrain textures, VISIBLY thinner air(!) (due to modified lighting in OpenGL, modified fog in OpenGL, and visibility of stars).. you really can tell you are halfway between air and space! Returning to Earth, you feel like you are flying in soupy water! Yuk!
So what sort of planes can fly on Mars? Not anything from Earth, that's for sure. Not enough lift or thrust. A Cessna or Boeing will just sit there on the ground without even moving. Put them in the air and they drop like beveled bricks with no wings. Both of my Mars-plane concepts are much like the U-2 Spyplane (designed to operate at around 100,000 ft, in simlar density air) one with a HUGE high-bypass jet engine built AROUND THE FUSELAGE, and another with a smaller rocket engine in the tail, like the X-15. The rocket plane has a lower-thrust engine, with plenty of fuel, for about 30 minutes of flight or so... the JET plane can fly for hours!
My designs are realistic (again, based on the U-2, with reduced weight for the lower structural needs (lower gravity) and modern (composite) materials). The rocket-plane is pretty much gauranteed feasible (known technology across the board) but the jet-powered one I am not sure about since Mars has so little OXYGEN in the atmosphere it may be impossible to keep a turbofan engine running.(My Mars jet-plane has twice the average fuel-consumption, though, to simulate injection of liquid oxygen or nitrous oxide). Bottom line, I now know it IS possible to build and fly a piloted plane on Mars and I now know what it would be like. (though I used a 10,000 ft runway with arresting wires... none of those on Mars now I admit).
This will allow them to be used in cave exploration and possibly even on Mars."
In Soviet Russia, the caves, and possibly even Mars, explore YOU!
Fun stuff to look into - I seem to remember not too long ago a /. article on a MAV constructed in which they posted a white paper (in PDF format, IIRC) on the device - it was pretty small, several centimeter wingspan, used a pager motor for propulsion and custom micro-servos for control, and had an onboard wireless video camera. I remember that supposedly it could stay aloft for up to 30 minutes of flight time, and was made from dense styrofoam. The white paper was detailed enough that someone (aka - r/c flight hobbiest) could easily build such a thing from the description and pictures given.
I suggest that if you are interested in building such a thing, look into using parts from micro-RC race cars. Some people are already experimenting - I read about one guy in Japan who tried to build a micro plane from his micro-car parts by attaching them to a small balsa glider (it didn't work very well - but it was a start)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Interesting idea. This could be an excellent way to map wilderness areas of the U.S. and other countries. Perhaps the butterflies could be programmed to traverse from the origin vehicle to a particular destination for recovery, but be given the autonomy to check out interesting terrain features if they see any. Since the butterflies could get right into the terrain, they could have good enough resolution to justify using them over the current USGS stereoscopic photo method for creating topographical maps. Maybe they could use a form of radar to map things in 3-D or stereoscopic cameras. Or program the units to land and acquire a GPS signal at specified intervals.
In a battle zone, perhaps the butterflies could be camouflaged to match the indigenous species, as long as they weren't too large. Or the butterflies could be programmed to stay a certain distance from each other to not arouse suspicion. Since each unit is a small portion of the swarm, the loss of a bunch of them might be acceptable. Cool!
The mind boggles.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Why not camouflage the butterfly to match the local population? If it's 10cm and it's camouflaged like a monarch butterfly and it never lands, I would imagine people would admire it for being a particularly large monarch butterfly, hiding in plain sight.
... by Cyberdyne Systems. Didn't you see their promotional video? "Imagine a world... where butterflies run on batteries."
Locating downed planes in a forest or in heavy cloud cover/fog would be an excellent application. A larger drone with forward looking infrared (FLIR) could locate bodies and smoldering debris. In remote areas where planes sometimes go down, it's all about coverage of the area in as little time as possible to maximize the chance that the victims live. A swarm of camera-equipped butterflies autonomously looking for anything unusual might accomplish in less time and with less risk to search personnel what a search and rescue helicopter would do in a week. It's very interesting. Admittedly, for many scenarios a remote-controlled rat could be more useful, but this is all about expanding the possibilities.
You can take some new technology and give it an Orwellian spin.
Gosh, can you imagine what would happen if tens of thousands of people had small portable, self contained powered, remote, broadcastable color TV cameras...
oh wait they do
-Malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
I first heard about this on NPR, where they were discussing its millitary applications, as in, sending small, insectoid robotic spies into the caves where terrorists are suspected to be hiding, etc.
What fascinated me was what they'd discovered about the flight patterns of butterflies. Apparently the idea of a "chaos butterfly" has another meaning. A butterfly's flight is literally random. Their wings are controlled by around 5 sets of muscles, each causing a different kind of movement, which causes their erratic flight. The thing is, the researchers can't find a pattern to it. The military was looking at butterflies because of this erratic flight pattern. It makes them nearly impossible to catch. Very good for spy-bugs.
But in all truth, the science is really awesome, but the proposed military applications are disturbing. If they have robotic bug-spies.. they could literally have eyes anywhere, and who says they'd restrict it to enemy territory? This is the war on terrorism, a war which Bush is assuming is on the home front, and I think he's already shown how far he will go to root out suspected terrorists.
~The Incredible Xan~
"Saying that men can't be lesbians is gender discrimination."
This is not the fisrt time I have heard of this. My mom (I am 14) works at a university (Case Western Reserve University of Cleveland) and they were thinking of hiring a professor named Mr. (Joseph?) Yan. He was developing a prototype insect with what seemed like a wingspan of 5 cm. I even went to his presentation about it, and it seemed that thay were about 20% done with the project. It fell through as Yan wanted to keep on working at his previous University, though...but not before I was given a special plastic one-of-a-kind mold of it. This was Spring 2002. I thought it was pretty nifty all in all.
...if you have something like the BattleSuits in Heinleins's "Starship Troopers"? That's where we gotta go. If you can stomp on 'em, you won't have to spy on 'em. URAH! :})||
BzzzzzzzSLAP!
Damn! Tell them to send another one...
Liberty uber alles.
http://www-bsac.eecs.berkeley.edu/~warneke/researc h/press/sfchron1100.html
'Pister is leading a team of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley that is developing tiny, electronic devices called "smart dust," designed to capture mountains of information about their surroundings while literally floating on air.
'
So, no, these things are not completely different. A creature's basic needs (in nature, anyway) are always hardwired instincts that don't have to be discovered with impressive intellectual effort. The what is always given, the interesting part always is the how. 'Genuine' (as opposed to artificial) butterflies weren't created, they weren't given any goals and the concept of 'coming up with something' is completely out of their intellect's grasp. The only goals they're naturally, inherently pursuing are survival and reproduction; if they weren't, there wouldn't be any butterflies.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.