>the house atraides mechanics when they're sent ornithopters that are 80% moving parts, on an entire planet of sand

I'm a helicopter mechanic and I gotta say, cool as those things are, the stresses on those wings/blades? Holy cow! CH-47s get cracks all over their fuselage and mounts from vibrations, but that thing??? It's cool and it's probably possible, but not with anything we have today. Not inorganic anyway.

In the Dune books the ornithopters are described more like what you showed with early planes modelling birds. They had flapping wings like in the movie but were also more like birds. I do really love Denis’ take on them though, the dragonfly style is so unique

Series goes on 20.000 years into the possible future where humanity is essentially drugging their pilots with magic sauce to traverse through a space-time anomaly for ever single interstellar travel. Im pretty sure there is some form of unobtainium that would withstand such high stress.

To be fair, in dune they also have jet thrusters

Kinda wild to just be scrolling through shorts and have the professor who's class I took last year explain the movie I am watching.

Dragonflies are very capable flyers, but that flying ability comes at enormous energy cost. Dragonfly has the largest wing muscle of any flying insect by % of body weight, and it must eat 20% of its body weight daily to fuel its flying activity. Nothing's free

Small animal can fly with moving wings because of their small size and mass. If it is scaled into a hundred meter size, square cube law is going to ruin everything. The strength needed to withstand the acceleration is enomerous and the vibration is really wild

I dont know if there is even a material that can withstand that much vibration for that long

Anything that moves creates a point of failure.

Helicopter blades spin on a bering and don't accelerate incredibly fast. Yes they move fast, but they don't speed up or wind down on a dime. What these dragon fly wings are doing it whizzing upwards and then instantly whizzing downwards and back again. No material we've ever invented would be strong enough at that scale

The problem with the dragonfly helicopter is that it would never work. What allows dragonflies and other insects to fly is the viscous force (a fluids resistance to flow). It is a frictional force that is quite dominant compared to other frictional forces for small objects but quickly looses that the larger an object gets. For larger objects, the dominant frictional force is drag, and that is the force we consider when making planes and other flying vehicles.

i guess theres a reason why dragonflies are only that size

fun fact: The main propulsion for the Dune ornithopters aren't actually the wings, they're jets. The wings are just there for the ornithopter's manuverability.

I'm pretty sure that in the Dune universe, there being casual anti-grav *and* repulsor fields also explains a lot here. You don't need a solid substance with unobtainium properties once you can cheat with may-as-well-be-magic energy fields anyway.

I wonder if the design is intended to avoid the inevitable problem with trying to seal a helicopter rotor from the harsh dust and grit. The ornithopter wings have the benefit of not needing to rotate fully so you can actually fully seal the joint, which you can't do with something that rotates fully.

Insects also more or less ignore gravity between fluid dynamics and air resistance, they basically just sit on top of the air and their generally paddle-shaped wings make their motion less "flying" and more "maneuvering a kayak in three dimensions". This is why heavier than air craft can't be ornithopters and you need thrust force or to use Bernoulli's Principle like modern aircraft wings.

I was in aviamodel section in my 14, ornitopter was considered the most complex and hard to make, the real test for craftsmanship, and it's not the full size like in Dune, it's just a model

The most important factor is scale and distance between wings as dragonflies gain the same advantage as a blade less fan from air squeezed between each wing on each side.

Dragonflys are also the most efficiant killers with a 98% success rate

Before da venci there were Abbas Ibn Fernas who managed to fly with wings centuries before any European could think of the possibility

I can feel my spine being vibrated out my mouth sitting in one of those.

I think you could design it with composite materials, and tune it and profile the airfoils to generate lift when vibrated or cycled. But, it would give huge energy loss unless better optimised than in the dune video... It need to look more like the dragonfly, bird etc.

I learned about ornithopters from the Don Bluth film Once Upon a Forest when I was little (like preschool), so when they came up in school my teacher was very impressed 😅

But, do we have the ability with today's current technology to build the ornithopters we see in the recent "Dune" adaptation..?!

"So a dragonfly is a great creature to model an aircraft on" Uhh I think the physics department is calling

Probably should make them with 4 independent wings that do a fast swimming like motion.

If they would have actually put dust boots on the joints, they would make sense, since in that specific scenario, a vehicle which flaps its wings would be the easiest to protect against sand intrusion into the mechanical joints.

I think their real power is the ability to be so close to believable yet just out of reach for us that they fit beautifully into the scifi world

Exo skeleton suit powered by hydraulics as an apparatus to aid in providing the necessary thrust required for lift

My father used to have an RC helicopter that was a dragonfly when I was younger

Give glory to the amazing creator.

Thanks for posting. I always wanted to know why i couldn't fly as a kid when i flapped the wings i strapped onto my arms. - not strong enough. Now i have a goal. Muscles!

Imagine the sound pressure off of beating wings the size of a planes. You'd be deaf 20 times over

What about humming birds, they've only got two wings. Yet they moving them incredible speeds and hovering over flowers while sipping out nectar.

It's amazing to see them in the bush. Hundreds of dragon flies will be flying over head. When a fly landed on me I watched a dragon fly land on it and within a second ate the fly's wings and then proceeded to bite the flies head off. Those annoying deer flies are no match for these fighter jets. At our camp the dragonflies tend to follow us humans, as they know the other flies are around us.

Thank you for explaining a fantasy novel/movie 20,000 years in the future and be the first channel I've come across that enjoys the idea and chooses to embrace, not debunk. You've got my sub.

A super advance helicopter that we haven't able go create yet

The only thing stopping such inventions is the type of material. Maybe in the future we would create light weight metals or materials

Would be nice to extend this to now the functional drones that are using it successfully

The helicopter rotor speed flapping sure helps with overcoming limitations.

The fact toy Versions were already a thing in the late 1800s

I would build the ornithopter using a piezo electris spring box so that i could get the vigh frequency movements of the wings. I also think it uses electro static lift from froction with the air and constant aerocavetation.

One day we will have it for sure

It has tube like structure going all over wings also resonant certain frequencies to help to fly

Exactly as described in rhe books, crazy how they don't have to be technically possible cus the film also has giant sandworms, spice melange, literal future-sight. Damn gotta draw the line at funny helicopters

did about 50% of the MS FS Dune content, def interesting vehicle to fly in a sim lol

Dragonflies are also the most efficient hunters on Earth. Very scary

Having four sets of wing blades that flap at the speed of sound cause so much vibration that the aircraft could explode anytime during flight or even before lift off. The engine used in Ornithopter is fascinating and unique. It probably has a calibrated vibration reduction system for the aircraft to be airworthy. Nevertheless, vibration is an issue and advantage at Arrakis, right? Let's just say the turbine engine used in this aircraft is somehow similar or a combination of a turbojet, turboshaft, and turboprop. A TURBOFLAP!! 😮

You should look at the most modern versions of ornithopters that use ai to make their flight more efficient

to make stuff like this we will need to make stuff stronger than the equivalent strength of spider web, and may also need the vibrational resonance to act as a form of antigravity assistance

Ornithopters! I want to play dune 2000 again. :(

The amount of maintenance that would require would make it really impractical

We are, as a species, essentially in the first stage of civilizational development. We have some minor capacity for space travel and can exert some influence over the world we live on. But we are far, far away from a type 2 civilization, which is what the people in Dune have. So it's no wonder they have technology that appears impossible for us. But technology like reactive metal, carbon nanotubes, antimatter, and other things we're just scratching the surface of, will one day birth an entirely new technological era that can make vehicles like this one possible.

Fun Fact. He took this ship idea from the John Carter movie.

Fun fact if you went to the moon titan with nothing but large cardboard slabs attached to your arms you can fly due to the low gravity and dense atmosphere

The points of failure, and the maintenance nightmare.

Terrence Howard had a flying vehicle that could fly in any direction even backwards

Imagine the noise? And the range of frequency.

Question. What happens if one wing is taken off dring flight? Would the ornithopter be able to substitute for the loss or counter balance?

You would need some really strong and light wings for them to beat that fast at that size. It probably can't be done. You would just shred the wing if you tried that.

Fun fact! Dragonflies can fly over 200mph during mating season

Remember different planet, different atmosphere density

The issue is weight to lift. While there's a lot of scientific research that goes into it... Essentially, the means with which we fly requires one of two forces: Propulsion Stabilized Oscillation Both require that the propulsion or oscillation is greater than the weight with which its carrying. In layman's terms, we are far too dense and our muscles are not designed to perform natural flight. The mechanical issue with Ornithopters is that of long term and short term stressors that can downgrade the aircraft's viability. Helicopters, alone, generate immense vibration in order to create oscillation. Which is why Helicopters come with a multitude of vibration dampeners and other installed counter-balances to mitigate vibrations... And ornithopter, naturally, would require its own mathematical equations and, ultimately, fail. Because it would, logically, vibrate itself to death.

What if one of the wings fail or are blown off? Will the vehicle still fly? And why can't we just keep using VTOLs like the Osprey? Also, how will a motor be able to go back and forth that fast without sustaining large amounts of wear or damage?

And then theres Abbas Ibn Firnas in 9th century who climbed a minaret tower and jumped off using wings but couldnt controlled the landing

Festo has build some interesting bionic bird drones, it's well worth taking a look. Maybe the first step to a real Ornithopter?

Also we're way too heavy

I see all these great commwnts about how this isnt possible, wings would break etc....while i am not saying those people are wrong, remember...these are aircraft invented and made by a galaxy spanning civilization that has lasted 10000 years. There are 10000 planets in the imperium in dune. Rhey have technology and materials that would could only dream of...just saying, in the duniverse...it ia possible, just like intergalactic space travel.

Look man, I don't care how practical they'd be. They're cool as fuck

Not that we arent strong enough. Its that we are too heavy to maintain flight even if we could. Birds have hollowed bones which drastically lowers their weight and allows them to fly easier. If we had hollow bones we'd be walking around like Glass

The ornithopter has to be one the coolest, and dumbest ideas ever.

Dragonflies look like giant gunships ants would use to transport troops

And then everyone in the ornithopter goes permanently deaf in 10 seconds after takeoff

It's really a question of materials engineering

idk how many millions of year Dragon Flies lived but it definitely more or less than a Million. If we as a stupid species managed to survive more than a million years without killing each other to extinction, probably by then we can make it real

It's in Revelations that they're describing the military craft that flies like a dragonfly

Is it just me or that looks like the hornet drone

It's going to crack from fatigue before it touches down IRW. It may be possible with some system is chains suspended in some gel/goop?

The real weird thing is they have antigravity in Dune. The large wings beating furiously are entirely unnecessary but they look great.

it’s not that we aren’t strong enough it’s that we aren’t light enough. birds bones are hollow

Just thinking of the wookie ornithopters in Star Wars

Hehe I've also got a set of beating wings if you catch my drift :)

What if the wings of an Ornithopter are only used for steering instead of prepulsion? Given how the Dune Universe has access to rather advanced anti-gravity tech - from the Baron's Suspensors to even furniture like chairs and personal glow lamps that follow their users - it wouldn't be out of the question for that anti-gravity tech to be the main method of suspending an Ornithopter in the air whilst flying, and the wings serve as the main means to let it steer in the air.

I have an RC ornithopter robot. Flies like a maniacal frog hopping in mid air. Not like a pleasant dji drone (which I also have).

I don't think we'll be able to make those wings flap fast and hard enough via gears and hydraulics. I think the solution might be something that vibrates back and forth at insane speeds (tens of thousands of times a minute), like those on electric toothbrushes.

imagine someone getting slapped up by them ship wings

As a kid i was convinced that i could make wings and fly

Reminds me of the Moths from LEXX

This may be semantics (yes, I’ll be ‘that guy’) but I wouldn’t say that humans aren’t ‘strong’ enough to fly. Humans can be incredibly strong. It’s about fundamental physiology, almost everything about a bird, bat, or insect’s physiology, strength, weight, shape, metabolism, etc is built for flight. Strength is only a small piece of a very big puzzle.

Go back and watch "Superman: Man of Steel", they had Ornithopters on Krypton as well.

The main problem seems to be the fuselage is not stable in these constructions so alot of energy is wasted. And the stress would be catastrophic.

If our bodies had hollow bones but with the same muscle mass then firstly our skeleton wouldn’t be to stand but if we could then we’d probably be able to be some of the most effective fliers ever if we had wings

So what WOULD it take for humans to use wings? Larger wings than have previously been tried? Stronger wing muscles? FASTER wing flapping? Just asking from a fantastical standpoint

The wings need to be wider to work and move extremely fast this is why we only have Helicopters.

Honestly we probably have the technology now to create a plane that flaps its wings and flies like a bird. Probably wouldn't be worth it, but we got the tech :D

They also heal you when drink a potion

What about an electrical motor moving the wing in a circle but an uneven circle so the wings go down and rotate a little vertical cutting the air then flat back down x4

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

Need to find a material flexible and strong enough to withstand the stress in that configuration. Also a very good anti-vibration dampers needs to be designed. 😅