The real reason generating lift with large wings is better is that it's much more efficient to generate a force by accelerating a large volume of fluid a small

The real reason generating lift with large wings is better is that it's much more efficient to generate a force by accelerating a large volume of fluid a small amount, than vice versa as with a turbine engine. This is why helicopters exist at all, because of the efficiency of large rotors (wings). Ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VTOL_DiscLoad-LiftEfficiency.PNG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VTOL_DiscLoad-LiftEfficien... (note log scale).