Ornithopters

An ornithopter is a machine that flies by flapping its wings. The concept has been around for a long time, but no one has had much success, as witnessed by these two samples. We start small, bird size, since that is what we are imitating.

Ornithopter - Rubber Band Wing Flapping Flying Machine
Here is a much bigger one, about a hundred times bigger.


World's First Human-Powered Ornithopter
Here's someone's Sci-Fi fantasy. Don't quite see how this could work being as all the weight is at one end and all the flapping is at the other, but we are talking fantasy here, so for a movie, sure, go on ahead.


DUNE "Spotter" Ornithopter - Animation Test
In the Science Fiction Novel Dune, Ornithopters are the primary technical means for getting around on the planet Arrakis. Descriptions are brief. I found some drawings that give a good portrayal of what one might look like. There seem to be several different schools of thought. There are the ones that are unbalanced or have tiny wings, too tiny to do any good. I call these Type B. Then there are the rigid looking ones, they look like they are made of Legos. Some of them are. Lastly we have the birds and the bugs, the only ones that look to me like they could work. Here's a couple of samples.

Ornithopter for “Jodorowsky’s Dune”

Ornithopter Concept

Dune ornithopter concept, Rainer Nowak

I can see how having wings that can be manipulated could be very useful, especially when taking off or landing. If a couple of good beats of your wings could get you a few feet off the ground like a bird, that might be enough that your jet engines could launch you into forward flight without needing any kind of runway.  And if you could swivel your wings so they could act as airbrakes, like a bird coming in for a landing, you could likewise land without needing a runway. In short, you could operate like a helicopter but without having to power your wings all the time. In order to build such a craft that could carry any kind of real world weight, those wings would need to be very strong, and I don't think we have any materials that are up to the task. We're not even going to talk about what kind of very powerful but very light weight machine you could use to drive them.