Would Dune Ornithopters Work In Real Life?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 มี.ค. 2024
- Why don’t Dune ornithopters exist in real life? They're so cool looking! To answer that question, here’s how a helicopter works and how these ornithopters would compare…
But my favorite part of the story is this: Helicopters themselves were inspired in part by science fiction. The father of modern helicopters, Igor Sikorsky, said he was inspired by a fictional version in a Jules Verne book he read as a kid. He often used to quote Verne: "Anything that one man can imagine, another man can make real." I love that.
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#shorts #dune #dune2 #tech #scifi #science #helicopter #ornithopter
Quick correction: When it zooms in, the air moving across the wing moves the way we show (bigger side in front). But when the wings rotate, they should rotate the other way (big side stays in front)! Thank you!
*According to you, pigeon would need wings as big as planet in order to fly, lol.*
*Sparrow is example of working Ornithopter, short wings, higher RPM.*
I think the idea of "SSD"s as data storing crystals come from scifi too,to the later nobel prise winner scientosts.
You used the Bernoulli method to explain how helicopters fly then the Newtonian method to explain how birds fly. Both are acceptable, and both can be applied to each. Let me assure you that helicopter is throwing down quite a bit of air. The shape of the airfoil on a blade is not the primary reason helicopters fly.
@@Only_God_Is_Allah_SWTno! She is putting weight to wing size in ratio. You put size to wing size in ratio. But your assumption is wrong. Hers is not.
This was triggering me a lot! 😅
Dont forget the immense stress those blades will have put on them!
Exactly, the ornothopter would be impractical because the wings would always be changing direction, using more power, and causing WAY too much stress on the wing. Helicopters don’t have this problem because their rotor blades are only kept at one speed, with the pitch of each blade being changed; it doesn’t have to overcome its own momentum with each cycle.
@@liammcguire4046 Dune takes place 20,000 years in the future. let's give our fictional descendants a little credit for massive advances in materials science.
Hell, the description Herbert gives of Ornithopters isn't so detailed as to rule out theoretical things like manipulation of strong/weak forces in the wings, gravity, etc... there could be a lot going on to make an Ornithopter realistic in it's time period.
@@RamPuppy I suppose you’re right
The stress the people inside experience because of the incredibly loud buzzing and humming from the wings, on top of that the insane vibration that not even Mercedes Benz could invent anything that would make it a smooth ride.
AND, considering the Dune universe is at war and it is supposed to be a war vehicle; it would be super impractical because it is fragile and reliant on all wings, whereas a helicopter with multiple rotors could savely crash or a plane could glide to safety when parts are failing because they got damaged.
@@Matt..S ya do realize that there was peace right up to when the baloney attacked right? And again, 20k years of scientific advancement. We wouldn't even recognize science from 20k years in the future.
Fun fact: in 1930s france military built a prototype of ornithopter. The prototype went through several ground test until the wing snap during wind tunnel test due to structural failure
The project later abandoned after world war 2 started
I was about to comment that too. The french Riout 102T Alérion in 1937. It did snaped it's wings but to be fair it lasted for about 3 hours in the wind tunnel.
@@SaltyMartian But scale model worked fine if I remember correctly?
So.. technically if the ornithopter is built the size of current drones it can work?
@@MollyHJohnsand such things already exist
@@ibraheemshuaib8954 that's cool!
Fun fact: The shape of the helicopter's rotor blade does not primarily produce the lift required.
That's true, but the shape of the blade helps produce more lift with smaller angles of attack.
The important bit, is that people understand that helicopters are not flying by pushing air down hard like a fan... which some people believe because of rotor wash.
The produce lift because of air pressure differences related to the shape of the blade and angle of attack (collective). Some smaller helicopters have symmetrical rotors, but the vast majority of "rotor WING aircraft" have asymmetrical rotors. The aircraft flies by lift pressure on the rotors NOT thrust downwards from the rotors which would flatten buildings. Which is why a heavy helicopter can hover over someone's house but a harrier would cave the building down.
Dune also has repulsors, the same thing that allows the Baron to float and the light orbs as well. The ornithopters in Dune could also fly as fixed wing in the books.
Fun fact: dragonflys are actually older than trees and once had 8' long wingspan
They had the advantage of a atmosphere with much more Oxygen than now... maybe more air pressure as well.
no they didn’t.
@@Sam_T2000you're partly correct, and partly incorrect. There were giant insects of similar shape to dragonflies (being an evolutionary ancestor), but they aren't 'dragonflies' as we know them, seeing as they were different species on the great tree of life. Also, the wingspans weren't 8 ft, at least not from what I've seen (albeit my research has been quite cursory) but they did get to almost 2.5 ft.
Also to the comments adding corrections above, I'm pretty sure they did not weigh as much relative to their wing size, as these ornithopters would weigh with people and flight tech, and weapons in relation to the size shown in the movies.
@@maxwellrobertson4831when you say “partly correct” does it not imply that they are “partly incorrect” as well?
But more importantly, and you didn't mention this, ornithopter wings don't JUST flap "up and down", they also rotate the leading edge of each wing down and up in that same up and down stroke. Which in itself is insane to think about.
Helicopters do the same ! The blades angle of attack oscillate very quickly up and down at each turn as soon as you input some left/right or forward/aft command.
Check out a slow mo of an insect flying. The wing tilts mostly on the up stroke. The morion creates a figure eigth.
if the atmosphere is very thick it could work
@@Chwibon the difference beening that Ornithopters need to do it all the time while Hleicopters only need them while stearing.
Birds do the same. They don't just flap up and down. They stroke through the air, like a swimmer doing the breast stroke
Fun fact: the helicopterwings moved in the wrong direction
Lmao, yep. 2D animation of the airfoil relative wind direction was correct, but then suddenly the rotor spins the wrong way when it transitions to 3D hahaha :D
To be fair a counter clockwise spin is the direction most helicopter blades spin the blades were just put on backwards lol
@hummingbird9149 It was kinda backwards, the airfoil was pointed in the wrong direction for the rotor, which does actually spin that direction on a real huey.
@@Larcona_ Yeah, but the blades were put on backwards xD
They're clearly curved both on top and bottom. *most* of the lift for fast airfoils comes from deflection, not from bernoulli
I was thinking this. Propellers are a type of reaction engine, and it follows that wings must be as well, for they are of similar geometry and function.
The blades on helicopters are often symmetrical. It's the pitch, or "angle" of the blade that provides lift, not the shape. In fact, the pitch changes as the blade rotates.
I second that.
That lie for wings/blades shape has been going for too long.
@@gergisterit doesn't even work for airplanes, which actually do have asymmetrical wings
Yeah, helicopters have a wash of air coming downwards off the rotors, not pushing up on them.
@@stardragon8585it definitely does work for airplanes
Helicopters fly by the principal of push air down = lift. It’s a big fan
One major aspect to keep in mind:
When we scale things up, some physical properties don't scale liniarly.
Mass scales in proporion to the volume, so it scales by the scale factor cubed, while the permissable stress scales with the cross-sectional area, which only scales by the scale factor squarred.
In short, if you scale something up by a factor of 10,
the amount of force it can handle is 100 times greater, but the mass gets 1000 times greater
thats why developing super-light materials that are strong enough is and should be the goal. one theory I had is if yu found a way to make a material like Aerogel in large quantities and make it slightly more resilient, put it in the space between a carbon fiber rod frame and sandwhich the whole thing in an inner and outer layer of some kind of vinyl skin, youd in theory have a super lightweight air frame that can be used for things like ornithopter flight research.
@@MrSnowFoxy I had an idea
What if rubber was used to be in the shape of the wing and since rubber is made to bend and can have it flex be controlled through the stiffness of the rubber they can make a wing that can withstand the stress and for added strength, use strings to keep the shape of the wings, as strings are made to bend and can be bent extremely fast with minimal wear, just an idea I had
@@moneydoodle8660 I was envisioning the wings to be like those ornithopter flying RC toys from when I was a kid, itd be like carbon fiber rods for the main support with smaller stabilizer rods mid wing to mimic the design of actual dragon fly wings, with a film like material that's lightweight but extremely durable. Not sure if that kinda material exists yet
@@moneydoodle8660how would you incorporate ailerons and flaps? Also, rubber does not do well in cold and it gets very cold at altitude.
@moneydoodle8660 temperature tho?
"I don't care if it's impossible, make it happen! Why do we even pay you for!?"
Exactly, if this is hard for us imagine time travel
my lego ornithopter flies when I pick it up and play with it
Dune does have antigravity devices (like how the Baron moves) so while it’s kinda a cop out you could say that’s how they achieve flight. There are real life planes that “flap” but they can’t fully fly without assistance from a propeller.
We have planes with wings that can move to create more lift, though calling that flapping is a huge exaggeration
Or air density is much higher.
My thoughts exactly. We don't know what fictional technologies exist to make the 'thopters work.
@@treyreppe4348Which in turn would make them break more easily and thus require bigger wings.
well, difference is moving wings on IRL aircraft are meant to reduce drag at higher speeds where smaller wings are needed to generate the same lift(hence why the aircraft you can find them are things like the tornado, f14, B1 etc) , which arguably has 0 relationship to flapping
It's probably the same "beetles can't fly according to physics" kinda situation
as someone once said, "an architect's dream is an engineer's nightmare"
Let's say our wing works like this: when it flaps forward, it leans forward, blowing air down and making lift; when it flaps backward, it leans backward, making lift yet again.
This means, the servos should first accelerate wing forward, then decelerate it, wasting energy on reciprocating motion, getting at best 0.707 (RMS of a sine wave) of the thrust the rotating propeller would provide.
It would also be a nightmare to maintain and repair, considering how complicated the mechanism should be and the fact it's controlled by analog computers, since you can't have calculators in Dune universe.
The wings of the ornithopters don't provide lift, they use them to maneuver. They utilize the holtzmann effect (the sci-fi phenomena in dune that made everything possible) in order to fly.
Still dumb. If they have interstellar travel they must also have some crazy energy storage and also lots of super powerful engine designs. I dont think the ornithopter can go faster than the speed of sound. But if you use thrusters instead, you could make the thing go so fast it would look like a shooting star.
@@froschreiniger2639 It's called sci-fi and I'm talking about how many people mistake the wings as the propeller of the ornithopter in this rendition of Dune when the creators have said that it is not. I couldn't care less if it's dumb or something, it's sci-fi, it doesn't intervene with the plot of the story and it looks cool.
@@froschreiniger2639They use spice for interstellar travel and can only get it on Arakis out of every planet in the galaxy. They're not going to waste it on one scifi helicopter.
Plus it looks cool.
It's more stupid than that apparently they're clam powered
how would subatomic particle repelling create lift?
Wait, wait! Biomimicry is still possible: bugs don't flap their wings up and down, they rotate horizontality and rock bank and forth in a figure 8 pattern, creating lift on the front and back stroke, sort of like a really good oarsman. So! Ornithopters could do that on many wings, then combine that with supermaterials, metatextures, jets, smart servos responding in real time to environmental factors, and just a lil dash of some spicy dune antigrav tech, compliments of the Baron of course, and you got yourself an ornithopter, baby!
Basically needs to mimic a dragon fly
Just a little dash of magic you say? 😁
As far as I've heard this approach fails quickly with size. Hence why birds also don't fly like insects.
No reason to do that
Biomimicry is such an amazing science
Fun fact: Juan de la Cierva was a Spanish engineer, inventor of the autogyro, a precursor to the helicopter.
A bird flapping doesn’t produce lift. It produces thrust.
A quick google search shows birds flapping produces lift and thrust. Source first page of Google with sources from NASA & MIT.
A combination of induced flow through the disc and plane of rotation gives relative airflow. Drag acts inline with the relative airflow and lift acts at 90 degrees to drag. The combination of these gives the total reaction. From total reaction you derive the rotor thrust to rotor drag ratio(different from aerodynamic lift to aerodynamic drag ratio.) From here we also derive our thrust which opposes weight and rotor drag which opposes our driving force - torque or horsepower.
Birds absolutely do produce lift. Even if their wings don’t rotate. You cannot produce thrust without lift.
Even in a rocket where thrust directly opposes weight, lift is still there, it just happens to operate in the same plane plane with the same amount until the body of the rocket tilts slightly of centre in which case uneven lift starts to occur.
Then the bird wouldn't really be able to fly...
@@jessemorgan3589 fundamentally speaking, there is no clear distinction between lift and thrust.
@@sudazima yes there is.. for example if a helicopter used thrust rather than lift... A loaded chinook would carve a path of destruction when flying low to the ground.
It doesn't because the rotor blades mostly lift rather than thrust.
There's a difference and it's important.
Fun fact: They did! During the inter war period one French designer designed a vechicle called Riout 102T and it was literally an ornithopter.
But it didn't fly.
the earliest attempts at flight by man has pretty much always started by mimicking nature. because if it works in nature, its just a matter of figuring out how to scale it up.
There have been many small scale ornithopter development attempts.. can't remember if any were successful. @TomScott comes to mind
I meant @TomStantonEngineering - but it appears he hasn't tried his hand at an ornithopter yet.
@@antcommander1367 yeah and anyone going too close to those wings accidentally, gets sliced into pieces 😂
Also, the flapping frequency of the ornithopter's wings is so high, I'm pretty sure wear would be extremely high. At each flapping, the wings stop and accelerate super fast, which is vastly different than an rotor turning fast the same way
They don't exist in real life because we don't have the materials or technology to make them without insane R&D.
@@Trucks_n_stuff I think in terms of electronics and control technologies we're there. Most space crafts have extremely tight reaction times and you could imagine a camshaft and spring system or whatnot to do the back and forth movement..
But you are very right in terms of materials. No steel and no carbon is capable of sustaining those stress cycles.
you should remember an ornithopter seems very very basic technology for something 25000 years in the future. They are only used because they are efficient for the need
I mean technically as we make more advanced carbon compounds we can in theory make pretty tough materials that can stand that level of wear and tear.
The issue always comes down to energy efficeincy. Railguns as an example have been proven mathmatically to be possible since the 1800's, the reason we don't have them is lack of good enough materials and energy efficiency. As most railguns require battery packs the size of vans to fire multiple shots. Hence why Fusion energy research is at the forefront of most development sciences. Because it would solve all energy issues.
They may not be strictly flapping straight up and down but more of a slight rotation which is actually how birds actually flap their wings - it's not just up and down it's more of an up and forward and then rotates back and down so it's a kind of rotation.
They also have anti-gravity (Holzman effect) in the Dune universe. From small items (glowglobes - the hovering light sources - and hunter-seekers) up to spacecraft sized devices.
the reason we made flip phones was basically to mimic a device in star trek
The wing requirements could also be affected by the atmospheric density and gravity on Arakis. With higher density and lower gravity compared to Earth, the ornithopters wouldn't need as big of wings as what is required on earth.
Also we are talking about a universe with legit anti grav technology, so could be anti grav engines providing lift with the wings just providing the plane with directionality.
This one makes a lot of sense
Wouldn't low gravvity and a denser atmosphere have made the Fermin giants?
@Guo1234bob Those books are as much fantasy as they are scifi, Herbert never attempted to try to explain how most of the stuff worked. He just thought dragonfly wings were supercool and futuristic, almost everything else in his stories are equally problematic (if not more) when trying to come up with real explanations for how they might work.
@@TheNagroth yes he stuck with the idea or main story and wasn’t too concerned about explaining the physics or anything like that.
Airfoils including heli rotors generate lift not only from the Coanda effect on top of the airfoil like you explained, but also from the deflecting of air on the underside of the blade itself.
Exactly. I was just going to say the same thing. I was a little disappointed that the vid didn't mention it at all and the comments has an utter lack of people that noticed.
The vast majority of the lift is generated by the pressure differential, the air being pushed down is more a side effect than a substantial lift generation effect.
@@nicolasd2953depends on the angle of attack and speed the air is moving. For example during vertical (0 horisontal speed) maneuvers since rotor rpm(speed) stays constant increasing AoA will move more air downward.
@@a.anonymous1318 what you said doesn't answer at all to what I wrote.
Of course increasing the angle of attack will increase the effect of the blades on the air.
But once again, air being pushed down isn't what causes lift, it is the pressure differential around the profile of the blade.
And this is the case independently of speed, rpm and AOA.
@@nicolasd2953 air being pushed down does cause lift, its newtons 3rd law
I probably should have expanded a bit more on what I said
Long story short, at lower AoA, higher speed Coanda effect generates lift. As AoA increases until flow seperation newtons 3rd law starts to take over left generation, depending on wing design it happens sooner or later (symmetric wings having 0 Coanda lift)
AoA above flow seperation we get Vortex lift but that generates a lift vector that causes too much drag to be useful
Motor in that helicopter's wing 💀💀💀
Finding a metal that can do that is already amazing
There was in fact a real life ornithopter built by the French in 1937 called the 'Riout 102T Alérion by René Riout' but during wind tunnel testing all 4 of its wings broke after 3 hours due to wear and tear
I think the idea in the books has always been that they are also supported by suspensors (the anti-gravity technology we see the sardukar/harkonnen use a lot
And another interesting point is that with helicopters landing in the sand blocks your view and is messy and stuff but ornithopters not as much :p
I thought they didn't because of Sandworms or something? Anyway, Dune has so much ridiculous stuff in it, you just have to kinda give it all a pass. It's Space Fantasy.
Jules Vernes has conceived so many scientifically fictional machines in his time that are now used today (the helicopter, the submarine, even the location NASA used in Florida)
This is science fiction, the technology is so advanced that it seems magical.
Although, I think it’s safe to take into account the fact that Arakis has a different gravity and atmospheric mix from Earth, and that the materials used to build thopters is unlike any we use for our aircraft? So they may not be so far fetched or impractical as a scientist might assume?
She also doesn't mention material science advancements that keep occurring in our realm of reality advancing us ever closer to those science fiction stories. Nor does she touch on the idea that they use a different source of energy and motor technology theoretically
@@DurzoBlunts yes but with that argumentation, you can literally call anything "possible in reality", just make up that they found an advanced technology that makes it possible, no matter how unlikely. Not the point of the video
@hidden9549
That's not how things works, the underlying physics is still the same. Rotary wing will still be much more efficient than dragon fly wings with different gravitational and atmospheric condition.
Those argument often assume advancement will only be used for [insert stupid scifi thing] when in reality they will be equally (often disproportionately) be beneficial for [insert stuff we made and use now].
@@jintsuubest9331 youre forgetting that they have anti gravity technology in dune, so it's likely that the wings are not the only thing holding up the aircraft. As to why they use ornithopters instead of planes or helicopters, it's probably because of versatility and wear and tear. Also, it's because it's a book and ornithopters are cool
It also doesn't make sense how in the books Ornithopters can achieve short space flight
a dragonfly seems to manage quite well........ one of the most amazing flyers mother nature has to offer
That's because fluid dynamics (yes, air is a fluid too) at small scales work entirely different than they do at small scales.
Without going into some really tricky physics, air is much sticker/more viscous at small scales and thus much less turbulent. At those small scales, lift can be generated by vortices, which aren't disrupted by turbulent flow.
At larger scales though, that viscosity becomes less relevant and turbulent flow more prominent, which means flapping your wings like that is horribly inefficient and the wing area needed increases exponentially.
@@joelmulder But there still was that prehistoric dragonfly Meganeuropsis permiana with a wingspan of 75cm.
@@Suthriel Studies suggest it had a wingbeat of around 3 to 8HZ, which is significantly slower than even the largest modern day dragonfly (around 30Hz. A humming bird is around 60Hz). In fact, it’s in the same range as most modern birds.
Truth is we don’t know exactly how it flew, but we don’t have to know how exactly they flew to know they didn’t fly like modern dragonflies do. Physics hasn’t changed since then.
Since we know they didn’t fly like dragonflies, we can very safely assume they flew more or less like birds.
@@joelmulder Or, its just, that larger wings don´t need to have such high wingbeats to deliver the same amount of lift. Large birds like eagles or condors don´t need to beat as fast as little birds to stay airborne (in their active flight phase, not during gliding ^.^ ), mainly because large wings are overall more efficient than smaller wings, and a wingbeat reaches way higher speeds exactly because of their large size. So to get the same airspeeds that small wings do to create lift, a large wing does not need high wingbeat rates.
@@SuthrielYes but the physics of how said wing beats doesn't change. Large birds beat their wings vastly differently than dragonflies do, not only slower. Thats the logic. The approach that modern dragonflies use works only on small scales, at bigger scales its simply super inefficient to flap your wings like that.
Leonardo DaVinci had helicopter blueprints back in the Renaissance
My favorite part is how everyone would probably be deaf after seeing one
I really wanna see dragonfly style vehicles one day
Wowwee toys has an rc dragonfly
I'm pretty sure they'd also need to curl vertical when they go back up, otherwise it would just push itself back down with every flap
The wings probably twist like bird wings. The lead edge points up on the upswing and slightly down on the downstroke
Figure 8 rotation.
It never ceases to amaze me the "x number of football field" as a measurement unit
Everybody walking around with Star Trek communicators
Leonardo Da Vinci sketched a helicopter design ( or more accurately a helical aerial screw) far earlier than Jules Verne, by about 400 years. He never actually built one, it was just concept.
That was screwed right from the beginning!
I made sketches of interstellar spaceships when I was 9. Yet I'm still me and Leonardo has an Oscar and dates women under 25.
@@Brainstorm4300the other Leonardo
@natmarelnam4871 The first working model was created in 1930 so no. Verne had great creativity, but if you look at his sketches you'd know it was complete fiction ignoring the most basic rules of aerodynamics.
JV didn't 'invent' the helicopter, submarines or space travel as some people often mention, but brought to the public concepts the engineers of his time already understood and considered feasible once they master the required technology
Yet another "fun" fact: Most rotor blades are in fact symmetrical. The whole Bernoulli's Theorem has largely been replaced with Newtons in re airfoils.
So while asymmetrical foils remain more efficient, the cost generally exceeds the benefits. It's easy enough to imagine that with a little induced stall one can achieve the same high pressure/low pressure differential required for lift.
Most rotor blades are not symmetrical... where did you even get that idea?
Bernoulli's principle is absolutely how rotors blades produce lift. Don't ask me though, I was only airframe for 12 years working on that stuff.
Nice work
@@Thickcurves I am guessing "was" was not "yesterday." I don't know "airframe," I study aeronautical engineering. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news and reality, airframe that has to jump all over TH-cam with his 1950's technology.
Bernoulli's theorem doesn't even apply in this circumstance. Most explanations of aircraft lift use it and they are all nonsense. You can easily tell the whole thing is completely misunderstood by how the illustration shows the air before and after wing flowing the same direction. For lift to happen, air must change direction. It's just conservation of momentum.
@@ZrJiri Hello what? Start your own comment thread? Or do you enjoy disproving a negative at my expense.
Well, coming from a universe where people can take drugs and become interstellar traveling phsychotic bugs, this seems like one of the most practical ideas
I'm willing to bet we'll see miniature drones using that design.
Helicopter will fly only after lifting up from ground. In order to do that helicopter rotor blades needs to be tilted. Tilted how? Not length wise but width wise. So that blade will scoop the air from atmosphere n push it down. If pilot will not tilt the blade and blade surface is parallel to the ground then blades will just cut through air but won't create enough downward force to lift helicopter. It is tilting of a very fast rotating blade that makes helicopter lift and fly. Not the not exactly the shape of the blade
Lets think for a moment though, because there are potentially advances in materials that result in a vehicle with much lower initial mass (lets say 25-50% smaller). The rate of movement in the wings is never specified, but theoretically could be approximated by the frequency of the sound produced, but we don’t know for certain. Dune never specifies atmospheric density, so we could be looking at a scenario if enough unknowns are accounted for, we could have a model that would work in a thick atmosphere with the same dimensions as the one seen on screen.
also Arrakis could have much lower gravity
@@andreww2098 if it was much lower it would be noticeable to the viewer
Dune is set super far into the future and I trust that by then, after settling the galaxy and existing for so goddamn long we would have developed stuff to make a onrothropter work.
It’s cool how sci fi inspires real life, which then inspires sci fi
Helicopters and planes actually produce lift by downwash (throwing air downwards) and the higher pressure and lower pressure are a by-product of lift
I really dislike the "high/low pressure explanation, while not outright wrong, there doesn't _have_ to be a more curved side. It doesn't explain how symmetrical aerofoils can generate lift or thrust.
It's actually all about deflecting a mass of air downwards. While inefficient (low L/D ratio) fighter jets can sustain inverted flight, which is difficult to explain with the "high pressure@flat side"-theory, it also makes people falsely believe that a wing though air is analogous to stone skipping (it isn't).
P.S., the animation show the rotor spining in the opposite (some might call in wrong, I just call it unconventional (I'm an optimist)) direction, the blunt edge is supposed to lead the trailing edge, not the other way around.
I think it’s actually completely wrong personally. The shape of a wing is to reduce drag, not to generate lift. It’s the angle of attack that generates the lift.
Actually, what generates lift is the pressure differential. But you can generate this pressure differential with a symmetrical profile by angling it down.
@@squareheadjack1918the shape and the AOA both are parameters of lift and drag generation, which are both intertwined. Saying one parameter is for lift and the other is for drag is completely wrong.
@@nicolasd2953any plane could fly with an absolutely flat wing. It would just take more engine thrust. Thus, the purposes of the shape is to prevent a relative vacuum behind (relative to motion thru the air) the wing. It’s the deflection on the air off the bottom of the wing that generates the vast majority of the lift, and lift from wing shape is incidental.
@@squareheadjack1918 no that’s not true wings are shaped like that because the shape produces Lift by itself. Symmetrical wings only produce lift with an angel of attack it has nothing to do with thrust. I hate the discourse about air being deflected producing Lift. That’s not how you calculate lift in engineering you either use the circulation around the wing or the pressure differential.
Fun fact: They used cat's purring sound to create the sound used in the movie.
Even then, dune ornithopters wouldn’t work because the wings move up and down, which doesn’t generate lift at all. If they were the shape of a “(“ turned sideways like a “^” and moved back and forth, then they would generate some lift.
She’s so enthusiastic about this stuff
That's not really an accurate explanation of how wings produce lift.
The air on the top indeed moves faster and does have less pressure. But what produces lift is when the air on the top of the wing sticks to the surface of the wing (aka, The Coanda Effect) and is pushed *below* the wing with its speed.
So it's pretty much Newton's Third Law of Motion. The more air you move down below you per time, the higher lift you produce.
Every aircraft is just a big fan.
@@Systox25Gliders aren't
@@iRossco 🤔
They don’t have an active energy source but potential energy. Gravity and updrafts/wind. But the principe of flying is the same. Pushing air down
Reads like the air on top pushes under the wing to make lift. Also therefore the AOA can just be increased to produce more lift.
No, what produces lift isn't the air being pushed down, it's the pressure differential created by the shape of the flow around the profile
Explaining lift in 10 seconds on the Internet? Brave! Lol.
Yeah, the comments are filled with people who don't know shit about aerodynamics and are explaining confidently that they know better. That's quite unsettling 😅
@@nicolasd2953I mean the theory she used to explain lift is labeled as incorrect by many including NASA
@@srthebox4946no pressure differential creating lift is correct(although it’s not solely responsible). What is incorrect is something known as equal transit theory. The idea that air travels faster over the top of the wing to meet up with the air that moved slower under the wing. Now air does move faster over the top but it’s not because it needs to catch up to another particle
@@ModernGameArmy yes you are correct, but the way she explains it in the video sounds like shes talking about the equal transit theory which would be wrong, but besides that, the redirection of airflow is still the main component of lift and she didnt mention it at all
@@srthebox4946 I’ve done a significant amount of research as to which is responsible for more but the most I could find was that it’s dependent on the airfoil. Do you have any data of the topic showing newton is more responsible?
Best way to put it is "Today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact!"
I feel so good that I know what an ornithopter is
I think the ornithopters have jets
Then what's the point of the wings then?
Some other commenters (probably book readers or at least watched the movies) mentioned the anti-gravity device - the same one Baron Harkonnen used. Probably have those installed too?
Its boosters for forward thrust
@@06.arkan2a2 probably for steering. Also it looked like the jets aren't the main source of trust. Towards the end of the first movie, the wings on the one that Paul is on break, but he still uses what little power the jets have to gain as much distance as possible
Cleo!! Love Your content, keep it up. I believe the first helicopter concept was by Leonardo DaVinci
In 1877, the Italian Enrico Forlanini developed an unmanned helicopter prototype that was 13 meters high and powered by a steam engine. This device was the first of its kind and achieved a vertical takeoff, remaining in the air for 20 seconds.
And for those who dont understand why insects and birds dont push the air also up:
when the wing goes up, it turs vertical, so it has less air resistance ( / )
and when it goes down, it basicaly turns horizontally, so it has bigger air ressistance ( - )
It took me a lot of time to write on phone but you dont have to like🙂
We don’t fly helicopters, the earth rejects them!!
Of course, they commit heresy of course the earth rejects them!!
Unnatural flight!!
Ornithopters are based on how dragonflies fly! It’s unique in the animal kingdom and predates birds and most insects.
A dragonfly is basically a quadcopter but instead of propellers, the have winged arms “swimming” through the air. They can vary the flapping of each wing independently enabling omnidirectional movement. It’s an awesome skill that has enabled them to survive for hundreds of millions of years.
Dragonflies are incredible!!! But yeah the point still stands that that kind of locomotion only works on a small scale.
@@plasmophage Yep! The amount of lift generated depends on the relative surface area between the wing in horizontal and vertical position. You need wings that are big and skinny enough to generate sufficient lift without breaking and we don't have materials that can do that at larger scales.
In the far future, we could assume that the materials are available but even then, it's ultimately just not an efficient way to fly. Mechanical vehicles have one huge advantage over life: bearings! Spinning a propeller will always be better than flapping a wing... but that's not as fun as space dragonflies!
@@dacjames We have all the tech and materials, we know how to make it, the price tag is in scientific notation though
@@plasmophage dragonflies were like 8ft in the past tho
@@dacjames Exactly! Thanks for expanding on this. Yeah I totally agree with both your points - A) propellers will always be more efficient and B) its sufficiently cool enough that I can suspend disbelief for my scifi.
The wing size was not the "unrealistic" aspect of ornithopters. They used Holtzman Suspensors, anti-gravity tech. The wings were propulsion and maneuvering.
In the books they explain that the ornithopters use jet propulsion as the primary source of lift, with the wings being used for stability and maneuvering.
Even large birds can’t handle this kind of pressure and stress, they flap their wings less than smaller birds/insects.
Eagles and Condors look like they’re doing a photo shoot every time they take off.
I also was under the impression that the ornithopters wings also produced lift the traditional way.
They're clearly flapping like wings rather than spinning
@@ObsessiveGeekOrnithopters also have jets and probably have anti gravity technology too
The wings seem to be for straight speed and whatever anti gravity device they have is for at least partial lift (in the movies it seems the wings are at the very least responsible for getting the thopter off the ground)
The way I like thinking about it is their purpose isnt so much flapping but vibration. Vibrating in such a way that it mimics a magnus effect that allows them lift
Some guy is testing a flying ornacopter currently on TH-cam.
Birds, insects and theoretical ornithoptors do not generate lift by deflecting air downwards. Birds and Insects generate lift by creating a pressure differential in the same manour helicopters and fixed wings do. The only difference is the motion of the sings, and the shape that is optimised for this motion.
What's your source on that?
Dude it's everywhere. It's pretty well known common knowledge. Go look it up on Wikipedia if you need to. It's so old it's even in the paper encyclopedias. But I can personally vouch that he's correct. I can also tell you that the wings wouldn't have to be the size of football fields. 😂
That's the same silly logic that says a bee wing can't lift a bee.
Flapping insect wings like the dragonfly don't use laminar air flow.
They generate vortices over the leading edge and the pressure differential from that is what causes the lift. Oh, there is one mistake though. That pressure differential? That pressure differential does result in a momentum exchange with the air where the air travels downwards. This is a fact with all forms of lift. The aircraft is exchanging momentum with the air, thus the air gets pushed down while the aircraft gets pushed up.
Yes and no. All heavier-than-air flying objects (bugs, birds, bats, helicopters, and planes, but not blimps) fly by deflecting air downward. Birds, bats, helicopters, and planes do so by using airfoils, so they fundamentally fly the same way. Butterflies, in contrast, just yeet themselves off the air molecules.
@@Unmannedair You vouch that he is correct but you then contradict his main argument lol
@@madisonlink7141 butterflies just YEET around I see 😂😂😂
Lift isn’t created by air moving faster on top and slower on bottom… common misconception but totally wrong! The shape of the wing lets the air on the bottom travel normally so normal pressure along the bottom but the top of the wing creates a high pressure area at the tip and sort of deflects some of the air upward so there is less air at the tail of the wing leading to low pressure at the tail of the wing creating the pressure difference of low above and normal below leading to a lifting force
That is how all drawings look like if they try to explain it but the angle of attack is way higher than you think not 0°.
Every aircraft needs to push air down with the force of the weight of the aircraft.
Flying upside down is the best proof that the shape is just an efficiency thing.
No wind does move faster on the top creating a pressure differential. I think you’re confusing this with equal transit theory which is indeed false
The most important aspect is that this is the choice depiction on screen. Rather than in the book
I'm sure that within this century we will have a ton of sci-fi stuff made from our childhood games, movies and shows.
You skipped a lot of what makes a helicopter fly but you are correct about ornithopters
You lost me when you called helicopter blades "wings."
im a private pilot and she isn't exactly wrong, we describe the surface of propellers as wings because they have similar properties when it comes to how air flows over it surfaces when creating lifting
Helicopters and similar aircraft are categorized as "rotary wing" so she's not wrong. She is incorrect on the specific lifting properties of helicopter blades though.
Fundamentally speaking, they are. Rotary-winged aircraft is another term for helicopters.
Anything that is an aerofoil is also technically a wing
What do you have against rotary winged aircraft?
When you are high on spice, the size of oscillating blades are the least of your worry 😂😂
They’ve been trying to figure out why honeybees are able to get lift off the ground with their tiny wings. Lotta people think it has to do with vibration, not so much to do with lift
Well dune is set like 8000+ years ahead in the future, who knows what kind of materials and engineering they're able to come up with.
Materials doesn't change how much air you need to move
But they are still physically impossible, as shown. Herbert put Ornithopters in the book as they don't need rotating parts, and hence are easier to protect from sand, but I feel it's more likely that future society has solved the sand problem. :-) Or just invented a way to move air that has no moving parts.
Ornithopter just ahead of our time, just wait until the tech available
You don't get it. It will forever remain unpractical.
IN ESSENCE, birds aren't helicopters only because biological life can't do limbs that spin >360°. If birds could do that, wings would be dumb.
@@Scarletraven87 we will see about 8000 years in future😂
@@crystalclear7799Eh 8000 years? Pretty sure we will have better things than this in next century
Dune is a VERY far future universe, what we have works fine so it isent likely to change any time soon
@@wombatuser ANYTHING that doesn't make extensive use of AI is fantasy sci-fi.
And no: the threat of an uprising is not a valid excuse for AI to not emerge a second time: it would be like renouncing to electricity because an entire town died of electrocution.
If the atmosphere was more dense it could work, but the air would be almost like a liquid.
Joules Vernn, rlly predicted like half our modern veichels from helicopters to submarine
I am such a fan of your work dear Cleo, it is so important to raise awareness and I’m admiring how you always have the same tone and upbeat, feeling - you nail it every single time. 👏😅👍🌸
actually the lift generated by bird wings isn't just from pushing air downwards, there's also more aerodynamic forces at play
And then the helicopter blade illustration proceeds to rotate in reverse..
Jules Verne has always had a strange accurate prediction of technology. Paris in the Twentieth Century sets itself 100 years into the future, yet Fax Machines and other devices are throught of
I'm not sure if it's canonical, but the folks in Dune have personal scale anti gravity, so I've always assumed that the ornithopters use gravity reflection or some such to change their relative mass.
Material fatigue would snap the wings off in 1 minute
Love the way you present information - clear, articulate and practical. Wish you had a podcast.
Wrong dont listen to this. As a physicist and aircraft engineer, Dune's model is possible by the speed incredible 200 cycles per seconds. The wings are an estimate of each wing Area 80.7ft2 (7.5m2) pulling achieving at least an acceleration of 10 m/s^2. 22,500 Newtons, which is equal to roughly 5,058 lbs of force for 10 seconds straight. Remember that in Dune they are using other technology. So unfortunate that Cleo is not stating any physics....
This lady Blows i agree, Actually, the wing speed act as drones, having 4 equilibrium points, and the ornithpers also incline to gain speed. a = (W - D) / m . The drag force depends on the square of the velocity. So as the body accelerates its velocity (and the drag) will increase. It will reach a point where the drag is exactly equal to the weight. This prototype would work at 200 cycles in earth conditions. It is just that it will take more energy than a regular plane..
Exactly ! some phycisist will corroborate @@hefferan
Rotating blades get stressed in one direction and continuosly near constant in value.
These would require the blades to get high frequency fluctuations of stress in opposite directions thus causing thousand times more fatigue stress and would fail immediately...
To solve that only flexible material and swinging curved motion would be required.
Where science fiction goes science fact inevitably follows
France actually made an ornithopter in WWII. It was so heavy and slow it used too much gasoline. But it flew 2 miles.
It was abandoned.
When I saw the Huey in the animation all I thought of was paranoid
I remember an article in a popular mechanic's magazine from the late 1990s or early 2000s that they actually got an orinthopter scale vehicle to work.
Don't forget the bumblebee effect. The vibration of the wings itself can also generate lift, so they don't need to be as large as you suggest.
I cannot express how frustrating that helicopter animation was to see, when it shows the correct way for air to move, and then rotates the wrong way
Just want to make an observation, helicopter rotor blades are faced the opposite direction that they were faced in the “simulation”. The “fatter” edge is the leading edge and leads in the direction of rotation.
Helicopters make sense outside friction:
1- Winds can be strong to push things.
2- Just put a STRONG fan aiming down pushing up.
Also, an ornithopter's wings would be limited by a stiff up/down motion, whereas birds open their wings to generate thrust with a flap, then pull them in slightly before the next flap so as to minimize opposing downward forces.
Ok gonna challenge this explanation. Yes the air above a wing is lower pressure because of the increased air speed but this doesn’t create enough lift force to cause the craft to fly. The main component creating most of the lift that causes flight is the angle of attack of the underside of the wing which creates higher pressure than the surrounding air pressure which ultimately leads to downward thrust in turn pushing the aircraft upward.😊
Americans when it comes to measuring things to scale : football fields