5 ms·
Almost none of this is intuitive without hundreds of years of hindsight. The more subtle aspects of stability, such as avoiding oscillation mostly had to be det
by nothacking_ 2y ago
Almost none of this is intuitive without hundreds of years of hindsight. The more subtle aspects of stability, such as avoiding oscillation mostly had to be determined experimentally. Then there is also the matter of actually constructing a plane, if you want it to be useful, it's going to need to be a lot more then some folded paper.
Thrust was definitely also a problem, a glider is not particularly useful unless it has a huge lift-to-drag ratio, which is only possible with modern materials and a solid understanding of airfoil design, which is a whole other can of worms.
Even things that seem so basic that we don't even think about them, like high were not at all obvious: just look at Sir George Cayley's gliders.
- moralestapia 2y agoPaper planes have been a thing for a long while, but I guess no one thought that could scale? It's like fire, super obvious in retrospective, and yet took thousands of years to become a technology.
- mr_toad 2y agoIt’s not easy to scale materials and retain the necessary rigidity. Like if you tried to scale up a primitive kite to support a human it would either be too heavy or too bendy. You need better materials and better construction techniques.
- NovemberWhiskey 2y ago>Paper planes have been a thing for a long while, but I guess no one thought that could scale? ... and they were right, because aerodynamics is not scale-invariant.
- moralestapia 2y agoWell, airplanes do exist now, so that did definitely scale.