“Japanese Student Takes Flight of Fancy, Creates Flying Bicycle” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJrJE0r4NkU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJrJE0r4NkU)
*Edit: Far beyond regulations and air traffic control issues, only regarding to physics:*
I’ve just seen this video of a Japanese student that has achieved making a flight of about 200 or 300m with a mechanism that turns the pedalling we normally do in a bicycle to the turning of a propeller.
Now, if we as humans and a very great bike can reach 40-50 mph (and very light planes such as cessna can take of with only 60mph – not to mention Bush Planes – all of these weighting easely 4 to 5 times the weight of a person + an extra light airplane design, specifically created for that porpouse) – why does this seems too hard to achieve/sustain? I can only guess its a matter of efficiency (or the lack of it), but which one of them?
In: Physics
It’s not so much that we can’t. We definitely can and have made human-powered airplanes and even helicopters. The trouble is that they aren’t terribly practical or safe. In order to be light enough to fly with just the power of a person, a plane has to be made of extremely light-weight materials, and even then, you still wouldn’t be able to carry much cargo, even compared to a bicycle. As a result, the plane ends up rather flimsy, even when made with expensive composites and alloys. This means that a crash from any appreciable height will be much more dangerous than a typical bicycle accident. Human-powered planes also tend to be very slow, so they can’t get you to most destinations any faster than a bicycle or kayak would, and being so light, wind is a major factor as well, so a human-powered plane might struggle to even reach a destination upwind of its start point. Add in the requirement of a runway to take off and land, and you end up with a vehicle that’s bigger, more expensive, more fragile, less safe, and less practical than a bicycle. Those are the main reasons so few have been made.
Latest Answers