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The human body can certainly generate enough power to fly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross Bird
by humbledrone 15y ago
The human body can certainly generate enough power to fly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross
Bird-type flight does seem substantially more difficult, though. I think that somehow the legs will need to be involved, rather than just the arms.
- sopooneo 15y agoYes. Those pedal planes require an extremely fit athlete working near the top of their range. And they efficiently exploit the leg muscles. I haven't tried, but I would not be surprised if it is provably impossible to sustain flight with just your arms.
- Someone 15y ago"Provable", in this space, is a relative term. We just cannot know how strong arms can get, given sufficient exercise, hitherto unknown ways of training, nutrition, etc, and drive. Evolutionary, birds give counterexamples to that claim. To see whether one could fly a gossamer-albatross type device by arm power alone today, I would look for a paraplegic or someone born with very small or no legs who has spent years in a wheelchair, preferably doing, say, cross-country running in it.