Mans inventions and natures creations.

themonarch

Newbie
Joined
Feb 26, 2010
Messages
223
Location
hart michigan
Aircraft
'06 Monarch 582. 150 hrs. tt. Purchased from the builder. Please see my aircraft on Craigslist.org.
Total Flight Time
46 hrs tt. 36 hrs CFI. The additional 10 with accomplished privates. Snuck in an optional solo.
I have an elder sibling, this being my esteemed brother Michael. He and family live in Great Britain. Michael is working towards his pilots license for flying fixed wing microlights. He already owns a Chevvron and recently bought a Kolb. Michael has been consistently critical of my choice of aircraft, that being a gyroplane. He is convinced that they are man killers and that "God didn't mean for them to fly". I'm having him check out the Euro gyros: the MTO line, The Arrow Copter, the Magni and others. Michael comes back and concedes the "new interest" in these "radically designed" machines. He continues to think poorly of gyros, (oh boyee, not good for me the younger brother!). So I came up with a parallel between the dynamic of auotorotation as found in nature and how I think it applies to gyroplanes. I used the example of the single winged maple seed, and how nature designed it to float or glide or even soar depending upon the wind. This leads me to ask you, the reader, which of mans creations for flight most imitates nature? Nature being birds, bats, squirrels, fish, and whatever else that can remain aloft in the air for a time and then eventually return safely to earth. Once again, which of all of these creations of nature, and others that you may add, is best imitated by the various inventions of man? And which one is best at doing just that? In closing, where do you think the gyroplane fits in here? Thanks. MJD.
 
Gliders are the most like soaring birds, bats, and flying squirrels.
I don't see any parallels in nature to the gyroplane. Even though the maple seed can be used to illustrate an aerodynamic principle, the seeds don't take off, climb, choose a landing spot, or fly at directions, heights, or speeds that respond to any creature's will and intentions. Nature is pretty much devoid of continuously rotating joints and structures for aerial navigation; flapping, yes, but rotors, no.
 
Following on with Waspair's comment, Man heavily re-invented flight, as compared to Nature's methods.

We had to perform this major make-over because (1) our bodies have a very poor power-to-weight ratio (200 lb. for a less than one horsepower? Would you buy an engine with that spec??) and (2) we are best at building with materials that don't imitate living bodies (wood, composite, metal) while we are so far inept at imitating muscle and cartilage (our flapping machines are pathetic compare to Nature's).

Therefore, none of our flying machines is much of a copy of Nature's flying machines. Obviously, they all do work on the same principles in the abstract.

Is the SR-71 really much more like a robin or bumblebee than a gyro is? They all push air down and back to fly and move forward. That's about where the resemblance ends.

If long use makes a particular device more "natural," you might point out to your brother that autorotation has been in use since ancient times in windmills. As has been discussed here before, the old-time millwrights figured out such subleties as camber, blade twist and operation at the shallow disk angles of attack that gyros use.

IOW, Man built and used rotating wings long before he figured out how to fly with fixed wings.
 
Hi Martin

Do not confuse your older brother with the facts, his mind is made up :) :)

Tony
 
Survival of the fittest or survival of the lucky.

Survival of the fittest or survival of the lucky.

As an expansion on Heron's plants and their successful propagation rate of 1 seed in a million.

Consider man's successful propagation rate of 1 sperm in a million that reaches the egg.


Mans advances are exactly the same as natures, by 'Trial and Error'.

Industrial Automation - Test tube filling system - YouTube

Man is not unique. Just study the scriptures of, Darwin, Dawkins, and Dennett


Dave
 
As an expansion on Heron's plants and their successful propagation rate of 1 seed in a million.

Consider man's successful propagation rate of 1 sperm in a million that reaches the egg.

Mans advances are exactly the same as natures, by 'Trial and Error'.

Dave

Does anybody know if science confirmed that the tail of the spermatozoa is rotating instead of undulating? Of my knowledge, it will be the first use in nature of a rotative engine for propulsion...

Maher
 
Does anybody know if science confirmed that the tail of the spermatozoa is rotating instead of undulating? Of my knowledge, it will be the first use in nature of a rotative engine for propulsion...

Maher

Rumor has it that it rotates, CCW in the Northern hemisphere and CW in the Southern hemisphere. It has something to do with man's water going down the toilet.

Just joking. :)


Dave
 
Man is not unique. Just study the scriptures of, Darwin, Dawkins, and Dennett


Dave

If a tornado went through a junk yard , it could produce a fully functioning Boeing 747 simply by random chance and random selection of the various pieces of junk that are lying around.

Anyone believe that ???

Dennet and Darwin and the boys would require those same mathematical odds to have their theory work.
 
There is a documentary somewhere that shows the rotarion of the tail and the engine that creates it. Also the tremendous speed of turning the other way . . .
That shows Darwin was right when he said his theory would be nule if this was found one day.
Very impressive!
thanks
Heron
 
If a tornado went through a junk yard , it could produce a fully functioning Boeing 747 simply by random chance and random selection of the various pieces of junk that are lying around.

Anyone believe that ???

Dennet and Darwin and the boys would require those same mathematical odds to have their theory work.


Arnie,

When one considers that man and his predecessors have been on earth for 6,000,000 years and that the average population over those years was perhaps 10,000,000 people and that they had sex 1000 time in their life and that each interaction had 1,000,000 spermatozoa, that makes for a lot of mutations, and perhaps a few 747s. ;)


Hey, the best book I have ever read, was Mind's I by Dennett and Hofstadter. On three occasions I bought the book, loaned it out and never saw it again.

Maybe they burnt it. :eek:hwell:


Dave
 
Or check out Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker.

In it, he lays out the constraints that make natural selection quite unlike a tornado in a junkyard (or a chimpanzee composing War and Peace by banging randomly on a typewriter).

The fact that evolution takes place over millions of years, not in a flash, is only the most obvious difference.
 
Sure, except for very short-lived little critters such as fruit flies, bacteria and the like. They evolve as we watch (unfortunately, often to develop resistances to the pesticides and drugs that we use to try to control them).
 
hinges and joints, muscles and tendons.

hinges and joints, muscles and tendons.

Earlier on someone stated that the flying creatures found in nature did not require and or reflect the mechanical complexity that man and his rotorcraft need to have in order to duplicate the same. Wasp Air was right. Bugs aint wired with the same kind of brains. Neither is the maple seed in autorotation. They don't need to, it's natural. All they search is their next meal, or whatever is else is required towards perpetuation. The "flying" is natural. The gyroplane, in this example, is not so different at all from nature: the dragonfly or the seed. We apply hinges and joints, the d-fly utilizes muscles and tendons. The seed?, simple autorotation. Motions and gyrations between all have some similarity, or did we simply come up with this capability on our own accord? MJD.
 
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