87
votes
Accepted
What clothes would flying-people wear?
Everyone else is speculating when there are proper reality check examples.
Flight suits that allow for free movement of wings, legs and tail are a thing. Some also contain diapers, so that your bird ...
- 142k
60
votes
Accepted
Would a steam powered plane be able to cross the Atlantic ocean?
Here is a scheme to sidestep some problems with steam engines in an alternate past.
Problem: Fuel is heavy
Solution: Do not carry fuel.
https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/...
- 305k
60
votes
Parachute equivalent when there is no ground
You could use the same back-up plan that the majority of flights in real life use: nothing.
The vast majority of civilian flights in the real world have no parachutes. If a catastrophic disaster ...
- 1,587
51
votes
Accepted
Can birds evolve without trees?
Trees were not involved with the evolution of flight in birds.
Birds did not evolve flight from gliders but likely from ground running predatory jumpers, birds and maniraptoran dinosaurs are about ...
- 81.9k
50
votes
Would a steam powered plane be able to cross the Atlantic ocean?
You may be missing why flight didn't happen until the early 1900s.
Flight happened when engines became energy-dense enough.
That's what they were waiting for. If it could've been done with steam, ...
49
votes
How would one attack or lay siege to a flying castle?
Let's revisit the premise that the sky-castle has a year's worth of water stored on it. As a corollary to this premise, we should assume that the stored water won't become stagnant or otherwise ...
- 28.9k
44
votes
Parachute equivalent when there is no ground
the air only gets denser, and denser
The craft (or lifeboats stored on them) are very light. They are designed with lots of air spaces. When they start to fall, all openings to the outside are sealed ...
- 49.5k
43
votes
Accepted
How do I prevent flight in a cyberpunk future?
In a last ditch effort to prevent extinction (possibly one that worked, after all people are still here) a team of scientists released a swarm of nano-machines into the atmosphere. They form a slight (...
- 77.3k
43
votes
How would one attack or lay siege to a flying castle?
From a safe distance, your sappers excavate a tunnel. The tunnel leads to the tether point of the castle's anchor chain.
Bring the tether down into the tunnel from below. Winch it along the tunnel....
- 305k
41
votes
Would an evolutionary predecessor for winged quadrupeds start with four legs and gain wings? Or start with two legs and wings and gain extra legs?
How about neither? Tetrapods evolved straight from lobe-finned fish; essentially no-limbs to four-limbs. You could have a similar process, except when the fish were developing limbs they ended up with ...
- 2,958
39
votes
Possible cause of a world without flying animals
The first flying insects appeared (as far as we know) in the Devonian, some 400 million years ago. Before that there were no flying animals. So not only is a world without flying animals possible, our ...
- 93.9k
39
votes
Accepted
How to prevent the evolution of human flight?
Magic is a dense material.
Magic is quite dense. It tends to fall down with gravity, and tends to cling to the earth. As such, if you get too far above the ground, there tends to be little magic left.
...
- 41.6k
38
votes
How could a lightning magic user fly?
Ion flight.
http://news.mit.edu/2018/first-ionic-wind-plane-no-moving-parts-1121
Unlike turbine-powered planes, the aircraft does not depend on fossil
fuels to fly. And unlike propeller-driven ...
- 6,494
37
votes
Accepted
How can a dragon take off to the air silently?
Owls & co. already do this, thanks to the particular structure of their feather. Since I imagine your dragons don't have feather, they might have some structure leading to the same result.
...
- 296k
36
votes
What atmospheric density would be required to allow a human being to fly without wings?
We call this "swimming" and you'd need an atmospheric density roughly that of water. The pressure needed to get a gas at that density has serious physiological effects, so just compressing the right ...
- 14.3k
36
votes
Could you design a fighter plane for a centaur?
You definitely could. However, I have thought of a few additional concerns:
How do you strap in?: Human pilots preferentially sit in a chair, and can easily be belted in. How do you strap in a ...
- 2,794
35
votes
Accepted
Airship lifeboats, design alternatives
The safest place is still aboard your airship.
Unlike seagoing vessels, airships do not traverse a medium that is potentially deadly for humans. When a ship sinks, people need to still be able to ...
- 12.1k
34
votes
LED light or heating element?
You would want to use a heating element. If you use a light (whether visible light from a LED or infrared from a quartz heating element), some of the energy is turned into light, rather than heat. ...
- 133k
34
votes
Accepted
How do migratory dragons avoid being blinded by sun?
Don't worry about it.
What you describe is the cruising height of a passenger airliner. If you have ever looked out the window of such a plane you will know the light is often bright but not ...
- 66.2k
34
votes
Antiballast for flying ship
Volume-based Adjustable Buoyancy
The key here is to not use so many stones that your ships float up. Instead, use as many stones as is needed to make your ship effectively weightless. If 1kg of ...
- 6,097
33
votes
Accepted
Could you fly a Boeing 747 on Venus?
While in theory the atmospheric pressures and temperatures in the upper regions of Venus' atmosphere are more conducive to the operation of aircraft, you still have a problem; sulphur dioxide. This is ...
- 54.2k
33
votes
Could you design a fighter plane for a centaur?
Yes, it would be possible to build a plane that a centaur could fly using WWI technology, but the centaurs would still be at a severe disadvantage because they would need to build very big and non-...
- 23.8k
31
votes
What kind of tactical situation/s would be best approached with trained jetpack pilots?
Your jetpack troops are combat engineers (let's face it, jetpacks are temperamental things and it takes technical know-how to keep them working in the field) and their duties are the traditional ...
- 38.7k
30
votes
How to make a viable flying mount?
I don't think a classic Pegasus/dragon animal will work (reasons see other answers).
But how about a "lighter-than-air" approach?
Your (gigantic) animal will split water into oxygen (can maybe be ...
- 430
30
votes
Accepted
How do massive starships levitate?
Most planets in the solar system have their own magnetic fields(ref.), so you could use those to levitate. Just grab a huge chunk of superconductive material, and cool it below its critical ...
- 2,583
30
votes
Plausibility of Floating Whales
Sadly, no. Tl;dr: the minimum size of such a creature is on the scale of kilometers and thus pretty infeasible. Instead, try making the creature some kind of colonial organism and boosting your planet....
- 12.2k
30
votes
Accepted
Biological Blimps: Propulsion
The same way a nautilus swims around in water: jet propulsion. Nautiluses move using a hyponome, which expands to pull in water from the sides of the nautilus, and contracts to expel a jet of water.
...
- 17.3k
29
votes
Possible cause of a world without flying animals
Discounting the problematic flying fish, flight has evolved 4 separate times that we know of.
Insects, 400 million years ago
Pterosaurs, 230 million years ago
Birds, 150 million years ago
Bats, 50 ...
- 2,665
28
votes
Accepted
Does gliding flight give any advantages to dragons in combat?
Gliding doesn't burn much energy
An albatross can fly non stop for days simply by gliding. For something as large as a dragon, powered flight would use massive amounts of energy, which means gliding ...
- 47.8k
27
votes
Accepted
Do gryphons need bird tails?
If your world is more or less like ours, and there is no magic, then your typical gryphons will never be able to fly. By typical I'm assuming you mean the size of big cats. There's a reason why large ...
- 3,989
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