> Well, except that we were only able to built flying machines (rather than floating ones) when we figured out why birds can fly [1]. > [1] I mean, a boomerang

> Well, except that we were only able to built flying machines (rather than floating ones) when we figured out why birds can fly [1]. > [1] I mean, a boomerang is really an airfoil so I guess Australian Aborigines had figured out flight long before the Wright brothers, but I guess they didn't need flying vehicles back then? What? I'm not sure anyone would count a boomerang as "figuring out" flight let alone how birds fly. I'm no historian but I'm pretty sure flight was first figured out mechanically through trial and error well before we had a good theoretical model for flight, let alone figuring out how birds fly. Either that or we have drastically different meaning for what it means to figure something out. It took ages for us to fully understand how flight worked, well after we could fly. That's the basis of the apocryphal story: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bumblebees-cant-fly/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bumblebees-cant-fly/ https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bumblebee_argument https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bumblebee_argument