It is clear that man is too heavy to fly using bird-like wings that would flap. They would simply have to be too large and use too much energy for taking off.
However, how about wings like on a bumble-bee? A bumble-bee's wings are very small and lightweight compared to the bee's mass.
Could one use nano-technology to create a super-strong ultra-lightweight wing that would be powered not by a motor, but by artificial muscle also created from nano-technology?
Man would wear this aparatus, not to fly like a bird, but to "buzz about" like a bug.
The technology for this does not yet exist, but will within 25 years. Assuming we can create very strong artificial, non-mechanical muscle to power the super-fast beating wings, wouldn't something like this be feasible?
That being said, how large would the wings need to be, say to allow a 180 lb man to fly like a bug? They say that from a scientific standpoint, bumble-bees cannot fly, yet they do.
2006-12-21
23:20:20
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2 answers
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asked by
mitchellvii
2
in
Engineering