Science when it comes to human wings.

[Buffy_]

Hi, I'm new and joined for the sole purpose of getting help with my problem...
I'm writing a story about a girl with wings. Wow, original, right?
I'd like to keep it as scientific as possible, though.
When she's finally released to public, I want the world to encourage her to get flying lessons from a bird specialist until she finally complies and does it.
Anyway, So that's how the flying bit is going to happen.
I was wondering a couple things, though:

I think it'll be easier to give her hollow bones. Is this okay, or will I have to change other things about her as well if I do this?

I was going to have the wings somewhere around her shoulder blades but the weight balance came to my attention. So now I'm thinking about placing them somewhere around her waist, but still on her back. Is this okay?

How long would her wings have to be to fly
1. If she did have hollow bones
2. If she didn't have hollow bones.
Her height is about 5'6" if that helps any. She's not going to grow too much more. 5'8" at the very most.

What are things I would have to pay attention to? Tail feathers wouldn't be necessary, right? I thought they were only to balance birds on the ground. Or are they necessary?

Any other information or help would be immensely useful. Thank you so much for all your help, everyone!

[Shadow Trooper]

Hi Buffy, welcome to the Chrons

OK, if you are writing about a girl with wings, I would suspect there has never been a real incident of this being reported. Therefore certain elements of the story can 'become true' to the story just through your explanation.

Yeah, that helped
I think what I'm trying to say is scientificly speaking a bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but he does! The world is an amazing place and this girl can just be attuned to her special gift and how to use it (with the help of her tutor). Something as simple as tilting the wings and using her legs/arms could explain how she turns/climbs/dives. Using the bumblebee arguement I suppose the size of her wings aren't vitally important unless you want her to be able to glide (which would make sense for her to want to do).

Also, I think the wings should be between the shoulderblades, no particular reason Hope that helps.

[HareBrain]

Sorry Shadow Trooper, it's been known for years how bumblebees fly:

The Straight Dope: Is it aerodynamically impossible for bumblebees to fly?

As for hollow bones, bone marrow is where our red blood cells get made - without it, she's going to be fairly anaemic unless there's some way of getting round that. And to get her weight off the ground, her wings would have to be enormous, and her chest muscles - to generate the force for the down-stroke - would also be huge. Birds look like they do for a reason - their breast is the largest chunk of their meat because they need to pull those wings down. And their skeletons and bodies save weight wherever possible.

But do you really need to make it scientifically feasible? The idea of human flight, and the deeply embedded wish to be able to do it, is so powerful that I think most readers who are attracted to the idea at all would overlook any scientific implausibilities. I suppose you could throw in the idea of hollow bones to make it convincing for those who don't look too hard, but I'd concentrate more on the other aspects of your story.

[Urien]

For flying mammals see bats for physiological clues.

[Shadow Trooper]

Originally Posted by HareBrain

Sorry Shadow Trooper, it's been known for years how bumblebees fly:

The Straight Dope: Is it aerodynamically impossible for bumblebees to fly?

As for hollow bones, bone marrow is where our red blood cells get made - without it, she's going to be fairly anaemic unless there's some way of getting round that. And to get her weight off the ground, her wings would have to be enormous, and her chest muscles - to generate the force for the down-stroke - would also be huge. Birds look like they do for a reason - their breast is the largest chunk of their meat because they need to pull those wings down. And their skeletons and bodies save weight wherever possible.

But do you really need to make it scientifically feasible? The idea of human flight, and the deeply embedded wish to be able to do it, is so powerful that I think most readers who are attracted to the idea at all would overlook any scientific implausibilities. I suppose you could throw in the idea of hollow bones to make it convincing for those who don't look too hard, but I'd concentrate more on the other aspects of your story.

I stand corrected HareBrain. Guess I'm just a lover of folklore

Although, having read the piece it does describe how the small wingspan of the bee is utilised to lift it. So I guess the wings wouldn't have to be enormous(?). And as for needing large breastage, your disgusting! LOL

[chrispenycate]

Sure, the actual force of the lift of the wings has to act through her centre of gravity, but where this is depends almost entirely on her standard flying position. If it's about the navel in your average standing human being, tucking your legs in and putting hands over head would probably move it up to the shoulder position. And don't forget that the force does not necessarily act through the attachment points; almost all birds fly with their wings at least partly swept back, so the lift comes well behind their shoulders.

Angels don't suffer from this problem; they fly in a vertical position, hanging down from their wings, like a hang glider (with the robes they indulge in this is essential, if energy wasteful)

Don't knock those tail feathers; they might not be giving much lift, but watch a hawk riding the thermals, the tail is swivelling all the time for direction; frequently doing more work than the wings. Just getting up there is not enough, you need stability.

Hollow bones, of course, and either short legs or a scrunched up flying position. A seriously protruding breastbone for muscle attachment, and the wings sprouting from well below the shoulder blades. The muscle masses for the wings and for the arms are going to get seriously confused if there isn't a fair bit of separation. At rest, the first bone of the wing goes upward, well over her head (those wings have got to be enormous, and we don't want them dragging on the floor, do we?) She is not going to be considered physically attractive by many humans.

If she's going to be flying with her legs stretched out behind, feathered legs (unlike the scaled ones of birds) with an edging of stiff flight feathers, for extra lift and manoeuvrability. They will also act as air brakes when she comes into land, better balancing the forces.

She will not fly like a bird; body shape and mass distribution are too different. She should watch birds, but all the movements will have to be worked out specially for her, preferably over something soft (or in a wind tunnel) Computer models of gliders will help a little, but she is essentially variable geometry, wings (and body) changing shape continuously to adapt to conditions, and understanding the theory of it isn't going to help all that much as she has none of the instincts to guide her; everything will have to be programmed into conditioned reflexes (even baby birds have to learn, and they are hard wired for the job)

[Shadow Trooper]

Originally Posted by chrispenycate

Don't knock those tail feathers; they might not be giving much lift, but watch a hawk riding the thermals, the tail is swivelling all the time for direction; frequently doing more work than the wings. Just getting up there is not enough, you need stability.

Please don't have tail feathers comin' out her butt!

[Boneman]

Hi Buffy,
erm.....don't want to depress you or anything, but you might like to search for threads from Mistingwolf re The Changing Angel....her story is about a young girl who grows wings......most of it is already posted on the internet on her own site, and she's up to about chapter 24 of her story. I'm certain your story is completely different to hers (her heroine doesn't get announced to the world, but travels by magical means to another planet, where she has amazing adventures...) and you might want to see how she handles the flight thing, re technical explanations, she does a pretty good job.

[mygoditsraining]

I had a quick hunt around to see if I could find an internet link to it, but sadly not. There was a BBC nature show that talked about the mechanic of flight, years ago now, and in it they discussed the anatomical changes required for a human being to actually fly.

Unsurprisingly, the breastbone and chest muscles were radically overdeveloped in the "flying" human - and that makes sense - your winged human would require substantial skeletal and muscular support for the extra limbs. Without accounting for things like hollow bones or extreme changes in muscle density, an 80 kg human would require a breastbone protuding almost 2 metres from the body - i.e. the distance between the ventral and dorsal surfaces would be approximately equal to the creature's standing height.

Mind you, it wouldn't be able to stand straight up due to the weight of the massive pectoral-like muscles required to "flap" the wings shifting its centre of gravity forward.

Sadly, power to weight ratio doesn't scale linearly. In order to have your character fly and remain recognisably human, you're going to have to change the rules a bit.

[thaddeus6th]

I'd keep the wings at should blade level, personally. I think I'm right in saying that a human's centre of mass is about the sternum (breastbone) so that'd fit in regarding balance.

As for the wing length, maybe you could check the relative length/height, weight and wingspan of the largest birds?

You'd need to make allowances for the fact that humans generally don't have wings (ie the weight will be more for the girl) but it might prove useful.

Just reading mygoditsraining's post above, if you're going to have a winged human feel free to fiddle with the rules of biology a bit more. Give her superhuman muscles/tendons by all means, and whatever else is necessary.

[Interference]

Just a suggestion, but keeping her height down to 5'2 or thereabouts might help the reader to visualise your character being light enough to fly. Stan Lee made a passing remark about Angel (Warren Worthington, X-Men) having hollowed bones and that was enough. Of course, Jack Kirby drew the most aesthetically pleasing position for the wings, and the shoulder-blade area seems a good start.

The feet can do the balancing act of the tail feathers, I suppose, but this raises questions about the strength of her tummy muscles, as well.

Assuming that she will need to be extremely light (the kind of person who might get blown off her feet in a gentle breeze), but still human in shape and fundamental design, not only her bones will need to lose a few pounds. Her internal organs and the muscles themselves will need some engineering. Short of something magical to arrive at this, I wouldn't explain too much except to say that she doesn't tip the scales by very much.

Not knowing your story, it's hard to make any other suggestions, but I think you can rest assured that the reader will buy whatever you say as long as the doctors are perplexed. Maybe at the autopsy they can find there was nothing inside her at all and that her corporeal frame had been entirely powered by Cosmic Essence or something.

[Nik]

I'd suggest you check out pterosaurs etc, but remember their internal anatomy was radically un-human...

Other route is 'really, really petite' aka 'elfin': IIRC, the 'flying fox' fruit-bat is about the limit for terrestial mammalian flight due to our crude lungs.

In a dome on Moon or Mars with Earth-standard atmospheric pressure but lower gravity, or on another planet with much denser atmosphere, you could get nearer the classic 'angel' shape.

Um, one possible alternative is a bio-engineered symbiotic wing-set that you leave to 'graze' between flights. Call it a 'Fly-amese Twin'. It has enough of your DNA to prevent rejection, the VAST breast-bone, the shoulder wings, avian lungs, the sprint-mode launch etc etc. But, wriggle aboard, let the bio-neural and convenience interfaces engage-- You're flying, and *loving* it...

Um, similar trick could apply to Centaurs etc...
--
Added...

Pegasus, pegasus, pegasus ??

[mygoditsraining]

I quite like Nik's idea. Sort of a bio-armor tech concept.

Anyway, going back to lighter bone structure, again, it's something you have to be careful with because of how things scale up - an immensely porous bone wall would be much much lighter than a normal human bone (which is just hollow down the middle for the marrow) but it would be very very fragile. So you'd end up with someone who was light enough to fly...but they'd have osteoporosis.

[Interference]

Lightweight admantium, I'd have thought. Unbreakable and not too much of a payload.

On the more realistic end of the scale, the self-negating hero has always been attractive. Tony Stark had to re-charge his breast plate or he'd die. Cyclops could never take his glasses off. I suppose Angel would have needed to have a special diet. Daredevil was blind ...

Maybe your flying girl needs to watch what she eats from both a weight and health perspective.

[chrispenycate]

Thought I'd dig this one out
Wing Span of a Human?

[quote]I'd keep the wings at should blade level, personally. I think I'm right in saying that a human's centre of mass is about the sternum (breastbone) so that'd fit in regarding balance.[quote] Think of a gymnast on a horizontal bar; to lie out flat, the bar has to be midriff level; if it were sternum, the feet would fall down (I've read that with a woman the centre of mass nearly always lands in the womb, so pregnancy causes minimum lack of mobility. I have never tested the theory, though)

Can you imagine the joint it would require if you wanted an arm and a wing to sprout from the same point on the anatomy?

Lightweight admantium, I'd have thought. Unbreakable and not too much of a payload.

I suppose carbon ("adamant" is an old form of "diamond") is biologically practical, although a bit frangible in the accidents that are bound to occur in the learning months. Would you replace the entire skeleton (I get a picture of the school biology lab, years after her death) or just load-bearing segments?

Maybe your flying girl needs to watch what she eats from both a weight and health perspective.

Eats like a bird; her own weight in food per day.