Artificial Intelligence thinks mushroom is a pretzel

arthwollipot said:
This was also not an achievable task so again it's not that surprising that the machines people build for it don't work.
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I don't agree that it's not achievable, but I do think it's difficult and it was never really the goal, so when other more effective and less difficult ways of achieving the actual goal were developed, it became not particularly interesting.
 
Roboramma said:
I don't agree that it's not achievable, but I do think it's difficult and it was never really the goal, so when other more effective and less difficult ways of achieving the actual goal were developed, it became not particularly interesting.
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I had a feeling I'd have to justify this. :D

Powered flapping flight was absolutely not achievable at the time it was mostly being tried. They couldn't generate enough power, they didn't have the materials, they just didn't understand yet how flight worked in the animal kingdom. And then they discovered that non-flapping flight was much easier to achieve and stopped trying.

Today, with modern lightweight materials and modern power technology, and a solid understanding of the biodynamics behind animal winged flight, I'll grant that it might be achievable, if we had a reason to achieve it, which we don't.
 
arthwollipot said:
I had a feeling I'd have to justify this. :D

Powered flapping flight was absolutely not achievable at the time it was mostly being tried. They couldn't generate enough power, they didn't have the materials, they just didn't understand yet how flight worked in the animal kingdom. And then they discovered that non-flapping flight was much easier to achieve and stopped trying.

Today, with modern lightweight materials and modern power technology, and a solid understanding of the biodynamics behind animal winged flight, I'll grant that it might be achievable, if we had a reason to achieve it, which we don't.
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Yeah, I can agree to that. :)
 
arthwollipot said:
Today, with modern lightweight materials and modern power technology, and a solid understanding of the biodynamics behind animal winged flight, I'll grant that it might be achievable, if we had a reason to achieve it, which we don't.
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One reason to go with flapping birdlike flight would be the nearly total elimination of crashes. Air stall and various forms of loss of control could maybe be eliminated because you no longer have fixed wings. "Issues" in flight are quickly corrected as it is done by a bird.

This is purely conceptual and I can already imagine concerns for passenger safety and comfort. At the minimum they may be subjected to nasty g-forces. Maybe the idea is all too ambitious.

Reasons to achieve: Great reduction of deaths. Avoidance of mid-air collisions becomes excellent because of the immediate maneuverability. Transformation of airport design and size because the planes takeoff and land like birds do - similar to the current situation with helicopters.

Problems: Oh the list is big, just abandon the whole idea right now.
 
William Parcher said:
One reason to go with flapping birdlike flight would be the nearly total elimination of crashes.
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Right.

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arthwollipot said:
Right.
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That's funny. The Little auk (dovekie). It's a pelagic bird that only comes to land to breed. The rest of its life is spent at sea. Some of them seem to make their stop on land the same way they might do on the water. It doesn't work so well.
 
Big flapping airplanes don't work because making it twice as big results in the thing weighing 8 times as much with wings only 4 times the area. So you have to make the wings twice as big again. They now weigh 16 times more and have lots of inertia and become very difficult to flap fast enough. Or something like that.
 
Not to mention that, even without flapping wings, things crashing into each other in mid air (outside intentional acts like air defense artillery) is pretty-much non-existent. Most crashes (outside intentional sabotage) are due to mechanical failures of some sort, which would be more likely in a flapping system due to increased complexity and the much higher number of moving parts. And added maneuverability might be there, but at the cost of a large degree of stability...much like helicopters.

No, there's really not much advantage to ornithopters for the foreseeable future.
 
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