There are a ton of superheroes that can fly in comic books. It’s usually people’s first response when asked what superpower they would most like to have. Flight is always a powerful ability for a hero, but the writers have to mix up the mechanisms to keep things from getting stale. This can range from rocket-powered suits like Iron Man, bursting into flames a la the Human Torch, or just mysteriously being able to float around (ex. Wonder Woman, Superman, Green Lantern, etc. ad infinitum). For this post, I’m going to focus on a few winged characters like these: This is an example of direct biomimicry where comic illustrators just mashed together human bodies and either bird, insect, or bat wings. It’s an image we’ve seen throughout history. Angels are depicted as having bird-like wings, Icarus and Daedalus from Greek mythology glued together feathers to fly away, and it’s the first idea humans tried when attempting to conquer the skies. However, human-powered ornithopters turned out to be dangerously unsuccessful, leading to many injuries and more than a few deaths of the pilots. Trying to flap like a bird doesn’t work for humans. We’re not aerodynamically designed, we don’t have the metabolism to keep it up, and we’re too heavy. Even superheroes have to overcome these disadvantages. Warren Worthington III (AKA Angel) has hollow bones, increased lung capacity, and other morphological features reminiscent of avians that allow him to achieve great heights with his feathery wings. Humanity's first forays into air travel are a great example of the different approaches of biomimetics: using structures straight from nature vs. applying core principles of the functions. A lot of nature's perfected mechanisms don't translate well into people technology. When that happens we have to look deeper and examine the functional attributes before we can try to replicate a process. Gliding was something we could master by straight up copying the parts of certain mammals. We now manufacture gliding suits designed like the tissue of sugar gliders and flying squirrels: However, there's only one direction to go while gliding, and that's down. So this advancement doesn't count as powered or sustained flight. Another X-Men member, Banshee, is capable of sustaining his flight with a glider suit, but that's because his supersonic screech can push him away from the ground and help him steer. [On a side note, this suit design is currently being adapted into a prototype for "underwater flight."] The Wright brothers were the inventors of the airplane because they were the first people, after centuries of failed flight attempts, to realize that we needed to apply the principles of birds' flight, not just the physical structures. Stabilization was one of the biggest hurdles preventing the production of a safe, heavier-than-air flight machine. After spending much time watching turkey vultures, the Wright brothers came up with a possible solution to the problem. They noticed that the vultures could twist the ends of their wings and manipulate the feathers to maintain their balance and control turns. Orville and Wilbur tested various wing-warping designs on kites and found that it brought about the desired stabilization with some tweaks.
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Alanna DurkinExploring the realm of biologically inspired design one superhero example at a time, with some other natural sciences mixed in. Archives
September 2016
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