physically, what is stoping humans from having “flying bicycles”?

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“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

34 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Everybody just needs their own runway, good weather a garage the size of a warehouse and a plane with a winspan so big that the camera cannot capture it. I suppose once we are in the air it will be simple enough, we definitely wont crash into each other fall to our deaths and kill people on the ground.

No idea why this isn’t a thing.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It would have to be very big and youd have to pedal really hard for a long time, which his not something most redditors are able to do

Beyond that though, nothing

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s not safe, it wouldn’t be comfortable for more than a minute, and you can see how massive the wingspan is, you wouldn’t be able to store the thing.

Anonymous 0 Comments

More than anything, he is a trained athlete. His legs are probably more powerful than your entire body.

Riding a commuter bike on a perfectly flat surface is about the amount of power you can generate by yourself, putting it in the air will cut that speed by more than half.

We are actually quite powerless compared to animals because we have fine motor control, which leads us to being inferior in strength in exchange for accurate power displacement. A cow is insanely strong but has very little control over it’s power, a chimp is way stronger than us but burns calories very fast and while a horse can run four times as fast as you, you can catch one in a matter of days because we are better at endurance that strength.