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Down through the ages everyone it seems has wanted to fly
like the
birds & now you can.
Bespoke artificial bird wings with a span of some fourteen
feet, the
primary feathers controlled by your own finger movements &
powered by your
own
arms in mimicry of a real birds wings. Plus an
aerodynamically
contoured helium
blimp strapped to your back to counter weight just enough
to allow powered flight with your own muscle.
Soar majestically above the clouds (or, as seems more likely,
wallow sluggishly below
them) with our new sports wings.
(?) Uplifting...
https://shop.spread...ir+balloon-A8600444
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 14 2019]
Artificial Sharkskin
https://www.smithso...ark-skin-180951514/
For Reduced Drag [Skewed, Sep 15 2019]
Goldbeater's skin
https://en.wikipedi...Goldbeater%27s_skin
" ... used to make the gas bags of early balloons ... " [8th of 7, Sep 17 2019]
Sharknado
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2724064/
[Voice, Sep 17 2019]
One For [bs0u0155]
https://twitter.com...27931892228096?s=20
Other explanations are more fun [Skewed, Sep 18 2019]
"I give you Titan"
Forget_20Mars_2c_20Let_27s_20Do_20Titan
Forget Mars, Let's Do Titan [Skewed, Sep 26 2019, last modified Sep 27 2019]
Exercise Is For The Birds II
Exercise_20Is_20For_20The_20Birds_20II
[Skewed, Jan 15 2020]
Counterbalance World
Counterbalance_20World
Was this the one [2 fries]? [Skewed, Aug 28 2021]
Exercise is for the birds III
Exercise_20is_20for_20the_20birds_20III
just linking in for series completeness. [Skewed, Aug 28 2021]
Down through the ages everyone it seems has wanted to fly like the birds
https://www.youtube...v=T0ml1mBJzNM&t=25s
Opening dialogue from 'Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines' [DrBob, Aug 28 2021]
Baked!
https://www.youtube...watch?v=CwABJGzifao
Tom Scott /YouTube: How much helium does it take to lift a person? [Skewed, Sep 12 2022]
The Bakery where it's baked.
https://en.normandi...plume-ecausseville/
AÉROPLUME® ÉCAUSSEVILLE La Bazirerie 50310 ECAUSSEVILLE [Skewed, Sep 12 2022]
[link]
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Skewed enterprises is currently hiring test pilots. |
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Presumably you're already up to establishment with paramedics and lawyers, then. |
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Try contacting Dignitas; they probably have a list of clients who are quite interested in an abrupt end to their existence. |
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//aerodynamically contoured helium blimp// I think the
problem might be right there. The biggest extant birds
have wingspans of about twelve feet (which is pretty
fucking huge), but weigh up to about 10kg. So, your flying
human is going to have to take something like 70kg of load
off using the helium balloon. And this ignores the weight of
the wings. |
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I will leave you to do the mathematics regarding plausible
sizes for such a balloon, and the consequent drag. Bear in
mind that large avian wings rely heavily on forward speed
for their lift. |
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You would probably do better to take all of your weight in
the balloon, and use the wings solely for slow forward
thrust and turning. Better yet, in terms of efficiency,
would be some sort of pedal-powered dirigible. |
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I get the wings, and I get the balloon part... but what's up with the strap-on? |
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P.S. I'm thinking of buying the t-shirt. [link] |
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// some sort of pedal-powered dirigible. // |
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... which is Baked in your 19th century, but not WKTE. |
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There were a number of problems ; it was manageable only in still air, the pilot (rider? victim?) had to have remarkable strength and stamina, plus as the lifting gas was hydrogen, be a non-smoker - at least for the duration of the flight. |
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Unless you're sitting on top of the envelope, I think you can
enjoy a smoke. Escaping hydrogen tends to rise. |
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Your theoretical analysis is, as usual, flawless, and we eagerly await - video cameras at the ready - your practical demonstration of the correctness of your asssumptions.. |
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Allthough it might be wiser to recruit [Skewed] to do the initial proof-of-concept work ... |
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The R101 and, more the point, the R100 both had smoking
lounges. |
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//Presumably you're already up to establishment with
paramedics and lawyers// |
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Our pen pushers tell us a few extra flyboys is a cheaper
alternative to paramedics & we use a jobbing lawyer, he
draughted us a very comprehensive release form. |
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Your recommendation has been passed to human resources. |
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//I will leave you to do the mathematics// |
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I'd rather not, trial & error is so much more fun. |
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Howsoever, some details I happen to have to hand (negating
any necessity of any tedious Google searches) suggest if we
were using hydrogen a square envelope 4 meters on a side
should be adequate, so as we're using helium.. |
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A long tether to avoid the blimp interfering with the wings
is probably indicated. |
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Bigger wings are available for purists but they're a touch
ungainly on the ground. |
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Consider the mentioned fourteen
foot span to be training wings for beginners. |
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//I get the wings, and I get the balloon part... but what's up
with the strap-on?// |
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Thank you for drawing our attention to this punctuation error,
corrected ;) |
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We're exhibitionists, seemed as good an opportunity as any. |
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P.S. That's not official merchandise but legal decided to let it
pass seeing as it doesn't depict the strap on. |
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//might be wiser to recruit [Skewed] to do the initial proof-
of-concept// |
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I'm afraid we'll be busy that day, but for a small fee we can let
you have a copy of our release form to crib from. |
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Yes, fine. Usual brown envelope of fivers behind the water pipes, third cubicle of the Gent's at Mornington Crescent Underground ? |
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So it's _you_ that's been leaving them? Sturton told me about
his lucky loo, but neither of us could figure out who the Fiver
Fairy was. |
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Not always us. We hope the Chinese military attache has been getting some decent intel in return for their payments; they can be remarkably humourless at times. |
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//Escaping hydrogen tends to rise.// |
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As often do sparks and embers. |
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I wanted to see if we'd done wing attachments in Counter Balance World... |
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What the hell happened to Counter Balance World?
...and who posted it? |
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That was one of my favorite postings. |
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Is there a view setting which will let you see only deleted account names? |
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//But the bike was made out of cast iron which didn't
help// |
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Yep, more modern materials offer much lighter options
while
retaining the required strength & much of the wing
structure
would include hollow tubing & other voids which gives
further
opportunity to
sneak in a little extra helium (not a lot, but every
little helps), besides that in the blimp. |
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//competitions offering a percentage of body weight lift or
just -20kg assist// |
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Like a weightlifting competition but with progressively
smaller balloons instead of progressively heavier weights. |
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The person able to complete the course or 'tasks' with the
smallest
balloon wins. |
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For the hummingbird competition the wings get downsized
along with the blimp. |
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//more modern materials// |
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Speaking of which, artificial
sharkskin [linky] shows promise as a surface material
for the blimp & some wing sections, reduces drag. |
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^ very much preferable to high impact aerobatics, which are invariably far too loud and expensive ... |
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Only if you don't use the release form we gave you. |
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//artificial sharkskin [linky] shows promise as a surface
material for the blimp & some wing sections// And yet,
strangely, very few sharks can fly well. |
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It seems strange that so much effort is being spent on
developing artificial shark skin, when the real thing is
available in quite large pieces. |
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//And yet, strangely, very few sharks can fly well// |
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No hands, makes it difficult to handle the controls. |
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It is being touted (well.. I've 'seen' it touted, how
knowledgeable or informed of it's properties & applications
said touters really are I couldn't say) as a surfacing material
for cars & airplanes, obviously it's more the surface (texture?)
design than the material itself we want, if we want to use it
on blimps
we probably don't
want to use actual sharkskin, leather (of any type) isn't
exactly known for it's light & airy nature. |
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Yet interestingly, the gas bags of pre-WW2 airships were constructed with an inner coating of "Goldbeater's skin". |
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Huh, so they didn't just look like giant floating sausages, they
actually used sausage skin as well. |
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Yup. That's why the krauts excelled at building them - centuries of experience at making sausages, although in retrospect it was the Wurst thing they could have done ... |
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Hmmm, Brötchen mit Wurst und Käse ... prima !! |
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So, you're saying that they invented the intestinal flew?
Really? |
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You can't just make that crap up.
It must first be beaten... with gold apparently. |
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//Bear in mind that large avian wings rely heavily on forward speed for their lift.//
It is disappointing to realise that there may never be a hummingbird as big as an ostrich |
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Well of course they would have to remove all of the shit first... |
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//It is disappointing to realise that there may never be a
hummingbird as big as an ostrich// |
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Well, not without a few changes to the atmosphere. Back in
the carboniferous period there were dragonflies with 3-4'
wingspans. It's acknowleged that the O2 concentration was
double what it is now, what isn't known is the pressure.
Flying around in 3 atmospheres of pressure at 30% O2 is a lot
easier than flying nowadays, so massive hummingbirds just
had to evolve earlier. |
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//what isn't known is the pressure.// That's interesting and
surprising. The only variable would be the total mass of the
atmosphere. If we doubled the amount of gas in Earth's
atmosphere, would it be retained? Or would the excess just
be lost into space? |
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Conversely, if we removed 1/2 of Earth's atmosphere, would
outgassing from the planet restore the pressure? |
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In other words, is Earth's atmospheric pressure an
equilibrium or not? |
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//That's interesting and surprising. The only variable
would be the total mass of the atmosphere.// |
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There's a couple of studies using fossilized raindrop marks
on volcanic ash, that's about it, we're really flapping in
the breeze. Even atmospheric composition isn't as solid as
you might like. Samples from trapped bubbles etc. have
issues with non-uniform diffusion, how bubbles behave in
ice is all over the place too. Hence a lot of isotope
proxies, which get very sketchy in the very distant past. |
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After the photosynthesis trick was worked out, life really
did a number on the atmosphere. Starting with mainly N2
CO2 and CH4, life pulled almost all the CO2, a big loss in
atmospheric density there. The liberated O2 ultimately
oxidized all the atmospheric methane, another big loss.
Atmospheric O2 then reacts with anything else lying
around, and gets locked up, think of all the rust-red
rocks. Life invents new tricks, diatoms locking O2 into
silicates, other sea creatures making carbonate shells.
Trees arrive, locking up any remaining CO2 into
intractable coal deposits. Even N2 is gobbled up by
nitrogen fixing microbes. Between sand, soils, mountains
of chalk etc. half the planet surface used to be
atmosphere.... maybe... I'll break out a geology book and
do some maths one day. |
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Still, significantly higher pressure makes a lot of those
"flying" dinosaus a little more explainable. I imagine some
of the outsized land dwellers would benefit too. |
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//I imagine some of the outsized land dwellers would benefit
too.// Surely they'd only benefit by a very, very tiny amount
of buoyancy in anything short of a pea-soup atmosphere? |
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//In other words, is Earth's atmospheric pressure an
equilibrium or not?// |
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'Or not' apparently. It's known to be falling, in a geological
time frame,
like a
very large very slow leaking balloon, I read it somewhere. |
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[Falls to knees ~ clasps hands together in supplication ~
shuffles forward on knees] |
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But please don't make me go look for it, find it yourself if
you
doubt me, then let me know if I'm wrong ;p |
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//higher pressure makes a lot of those "flying" dinosaus a little
more explainable// |
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You're almost certainly right but other explanations are more
fun [linky]. |
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//It is disappointing to realise that there may never be a
hummingbird as big as an ostrich// |
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[Strikes a dramatics pose & flourishes a pointy stick at the
sky] |
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But only in the sense of 'hey! look at this!'', if
you want it you have to buy it. |
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Only a little more gravity than our Moon,
nearly twice Earth's atmosphere & plenty of real estate for
your selective breeding program up for grabs, once we've
finished
teratorming
it a bit. |
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Bring your own hummingbirds. |
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//other explanations are more fun [linky]// |
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Ha! Nah.. H2 leaks. There would need to be continuous
production. |
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//would need to be continuous production// |
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Given a plentiful supply of H2O shouldn't be a problem, there
must be biological or cellular processes that could be turned
to the purpose, failing that electrolysis with an organ like an
electric eels is still an option. |
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//What the hell happened to Counter Balance World?// |
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Did you mean this one [2 fries]? <link> posted by [flypaper]
Aug 29 2003 & yes, he did include strap on wings. |
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Yes I know it's been a while since you asked, but I only just
found it. |
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Was just cruising through some old posts. |
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Saw your mention &
got the urge to look for it. |
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Nicer wings might be nice but this is pretty much everything I was imagining, accept the strap on, but you cant have everything I suppose. |
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Less buoyancy so you actually have to work to 'fly' in my mind for this idea but that's just detail. |
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Also looks like in practice you'll have to use the wings more like a dragonfly does than a bird (I mean the motions rather than the speed). |
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And you can't expect to move fast enough to get aerofoil lift without a headwind of course. |
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Was also thinking more of the sort of harness you have for a hang glider that allows you to put your legs up after take off & take them out again for landing. |
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But again, those are just details. |
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