Slashdot Mirror
First Human-Powered Ornithopter
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.'"
Must flow.
To put off writing their thesis.
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.
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.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
Also because it's a 0/2 flying artifact for 0 colorless mana.