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Asked by jessica12connell to Sinead, Jessamyn, Eleanor, Chris, Adam on 19 Nov 2013.
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Christian Wirtz answered on 19 Nov 2013:
Hi Jessica,
I imagine you don’t want to hear the “yes, the device is called a plane/helicopter/hang-glider/parachute/jetpack, you can buy it on the internet” answer, but are instead looking for the angelic-style wing approach.
In that case the answer is “no”. Birds have evolved to be very light, their bones are hollow and their bodies quite small when you take away the feathers to make them light and aerodynamic. Humans are simply too heavy and badly-shaped to ever grow/press on some wings and take off. Our arm and shoulder muscles wouldn’t be able to produce the necessary strength to take off or maintain flight. That’s why we’ve spent the last couple of centuries coming up with devices that do the work for us, to the point that there are bicycles that can fly (because your leg muscles can produce the necessary energy if you train hard enough). And looking at what we’ve come up with I think we’re doing quite well!
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Adam Murphy answered on 19 Nov 2013:
Hey Jessica,
There are some cool ideas, like guys testing jetpacks and flying cars and personal helicopters, but they’re probably quite a long off. And you wouldn’t want a jetpack. I don’t think I’d like a rocket that close to my backside!
But there is a clever little bit of space physics I’d like to tell you about. It’s about one of Saturn’s Moons; Titan.
Titan is strange, because it’s the only Moon with a thick atmosphere (which is nearly all Hydrogen). If its atmosphere was as warm as Earth, it would be much thicker than our air, making it a bit more like water, something you can swim through. It’s gravity is also much weaker than Earth’s because it’s so much smaller, so you could bounce around like on the Moon.
The point is, that on Titan you can nearly swim through the air, and there’s almost no gravity, so you could probably get enough lift to fly by yourself if you strapped a pair of wings onto your arms! How awesome is that! I’d love to see that.
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Sinead Cullen answered on 19 Nov 2013:
Hi Jessica,
The guys are spot on with they’re answers so I’m afraid not. It would be really cool if it was possible though. If we got a really really windy day in Ireland and you put an umbrella up you might lift of for a second a too, but that’s really dangerous too!
🙂
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Eleanor Holmes answered on 19 Nov 2013:
What if we had an array of strong magnets and wore a suit made of magnets of the same polarity and used the repulsive forces to levitate and fly above the strong magnets!?
There are a lot of pie-in-the-sky ideas about human flight. It’s one of the preferred topics at lunch amongst my scientist friends. But, in real terms it’s extremely unlikely (unfortunately). The physics is too complicated. We have much better ways of getting from point A to point B already. The only thing we miss out on is the feeling of flight. The joy of it.
But we can get a sense of flight from something as simple as being suspended by a rope around our waist. Like the rigs that are used on stage and in films to make it look like people are flying. That looks incredibly fun to me! There are also wind tunnels that simulate what it’s like to fall out of an airplane and have the wind rush past you.
My sister and I have a plan to go skydiving for her 18th birthday. I only have one more year to prepare for that!
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