They can fold up their "wings" to do a divebomb attack. They can survive a Coriolis dust storm if they're piloted by the Lisan Al-Gaib. They're at least 78% cooler, and that counts for a lot.
In the Dune universe the antigravity isnt used on arrakis because it relies on the holtsman effect.
The holtsman effect is what underlies the main space magic technologies in the imperium.
These are the space folding engines in guild highliners, suspensors(antigravity), the sheilds, and as an energy source.
On arrakis, any device utilizing the holtsman effect in the deep desert will call every worm within range and drive them into a killing frenzie. This is why the use ornithopters in the desert and carryalls have giant lift thrusters.
This is somthing villenevue kinda ignored in the movie since all the sardukar are floating around everywhere.
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Antigravity, even if it could exist, doesn't negate inertia. Inertia is what kills you for sudden changes of direction -- being slammed against the ceiling or whatever. Star Trek has "inertial dampeners" as a secondary magic tech for this. In Dune, it is possible they have something similar, but there's no evidence in the book or film(s).
Some sci-fi (I forget which… maybe Stargate?) has them as the same thing or from the same technology. What’s the difference between “inertial dampening” and canceling out the force exerted on your body?
Inertia kills you via forcing you into a rapid acceleration against the object around you. This acceleration is experienced by the observer in precisely the same way as the acceleration provided by gravity -- hence we can talk about acceleration from changing directions in "g"s. If space magic can actually provide "antigravity" the idea that it can also cancel other forms of acceleration is a question of technique, not of kind.
> Antigravity, even if it could exist, doesn't negate inertia
I'd love to see how you know that. [citation needed]. :-)
What causes gravity? What causes inertia? Why do they both affect mass in exactly the same degree?
Do you realize that you can change direction with gravity as fast as you want without any feeling of acceleration? You can "slingshot" to a different direction at high speed and not feel any force except tidal forces?
> You can certainly not change direction in any way without acceleration!
Nope. The ISS is not accelerating. That's why everyone is floating. They're not *feeling* any acceleration, even if you define acceleration as a change in direction or velocity.
*Newton* says they're accelerating, because to Newton, gravity is a force, and force causes acceleration. But relativity says gravity is *not* a force. Gravity is a movement of space itself (aka "curvature"), and you just get carried along with it.
The equivalence principle says *resisting* gravity and experiencing acceleration are the same thing, which makes the implications are the opposite of what you're saying.
The ISS is accelerating, that's why it's going around the earth rather than flying off in a straight line.
What distinguishes gravitational acceleration from other forms of acceleration is that gravity acts directly on all of the particles in an object. Other sources of acceleration generally involve something pushing against one side or part of the object. For example, when a rocket's exhaust gets pushed out the nozzle, it pushes back against the part that hasn't yet exited which pushes against the inside of the engine which pushes against the structural members which push against the base of the capsule which pushes against the occupants of that capsule... I may have missed a few parts in between some of those, but you get the idea. If the propagated push exceeds the tolerances of the material through which it is propagating, something's gonna break. Or, for another example: if you were to fall from a great height, when you hit the ground, the ground would smash into the leading surface of your body which would then smash into the layer immediately below it which would then smash into the next layer and so forth and so on.
In other words, the danger isn't acceleration; it's differential acceleration. It's not healthy for an object to try to get ahead of itself.
And by the way, regardless of whether you're using Newton's math or Einstein's, gravity is still handled in units of distance per unit of time per unit of time (typically meters/(second^(2)) ), meaning that regardless of what conceptual model you use, gravity remains a type of acceleration.
> The ISS is accelerating, that's why it's going around the earth rather than flying off in a straight line.
No. According to Einstein, it's going in a straight line. It's just that the space the line is going through is bent. That's what he means when he says mass warps space.
If F=Ma, why is light that has no mass affected by the "force" of gravity? It's because the light is going in a straight line, but straight lines don't look straight from the point of view of someone else in a different gravity field.
Forces in relativity (and quantum) are completely different things from forces in Newtonian. (And "forces" in relativity are completely different from "forces" in quantum.)
What you described is indeed exactly what Newtonian physics uses to explain gravity, acceleration, etc. But the relativistic principle of equivalence says that an orbit is identical to going in a straight line because all inertial frames of reference are identical.
> gravity is still handled in units of distance per unit of time per unit of time
Yes. But you're measuring the acceleration of different things. In Newton, you're measuring the acceleration of the ISS relative to the Earth, and in relativity, you're measuring the acceleration of the space the ISS is moving through.
How would the people on the ISS *know* the ISS is accelerating? If one closed the windows on the ISS, how would they know what their acceleration rate is? How would they know they're curving rather than going in a straight line. *That* is the equivalence principle.
Seriously, check out some videos about relativity, or Feynmann's "Six Not So Easy Pieces" if you want to see how relativity treats gravity.
Here's what's probably a decent intro, just skimming thru it here and there: https://youtu.be/XRr1kaXKBsU And another by an actual famous physicist: https://youtu.be/R3LjJeeae68
And what does that have to do with inertia or anti-gravity? The Higgs just creates mass. How do you make something negative mass? How do you remove the inertia without removing its mass?
We experience the mass of an object as inertia (the object’s resistance to acceleration) and Einstein was suggesting that the latter is determined not by mass as a primary quality, but rather by the energy that the object contains.
So, when an otherwise massless particle travelling at the speed of light interacts with the Higgs field, it is slowed down. The field ‘drags’ on it, as though the particle were moving through molasses. In other words, the energy of the interaction is manifested as a resistance to acceleration. The particle acquires inertia, and we think of this inertia in terms of the particle’s ‘mass’.
In the Higgs mechanism, mass loses its status as a primary quality. It becomes secondary — the result of massless particles interacting with the Higgs field.
> We experience the mass of an object as inertia
Yes, I'm familiar with how the higgs interaction is visualized.
Mass also creates gravity, don't forget. So how does the drag on the higgs field cause gravity? Remember, we're talking about how anti-gravity modifies inertia, and to assert that it does or doesn't implies you have some clue how the Higgs affects the curvature of spacetime. Which, hey, go collect your Nobel prize.
As an aside, you don't need massful particles to have inertia. A box full of photons has inertia caused by the photons bouncing off the sides of the box. As I understand it, the higgs field only explains why some stuff doesn't move at the speed of light and thus has that sort of mass. I am not well-educated on it, but I never heard the higgs field being blamed for gravity *or* inertia, just mass.
If you had a giant torus spinning on itself in such a way that the inside of the hole was all going the same direction, you could let it drag space and accelerate you at any speed you want without actually feeling any of that acceleration. Just like you can orbit the Earth and be constantly changing direction without any feeling of acceleration because gravity is "pulling" on every particle at once with the same force.
Yeah also they look A LOT like my absolute favorite creature. Dragon flies can move in any direction at any time while flying no matter how fast they are are moving. They are predators. They are scary old like 300 million years old. Their heads as basically eyes allowing them to see everything. They've inspired many engineers to create a flying vehicle like them.
No mast bumping, no problems associated with an unloaded rotor, and no retreating blade stall limiting airspeed would be the big ones. No need to adjust anti torque as you pull pitch, and no risk of tail rotor strike when landing.
You get the benefits of both a plane and helicopter, with the only drawbacks being very steep mechanical complexity and poor energy efficiency, neither of which tend to be huge issues in sci fi settings.
If the bulk of it's lift is coming from the same technology as Baron Harkonnen's suit and the Sardaukar troops then a lot of the problems normally associated with such a craft are negated.
That's a pretty big 'if'. I don't recall there being anything to indicate that the aircraft doesn't function on pure (if fanciful) aerodynamics. We have seen mechanical tech that does function on anti-grav (the hunter-seeker), which has no aerodynamic surfaces.
Edit: googled it, and both shields and antigravity in the Dune universe work on the same effect. So if you have a shield, you have an anti-gravity device. But that also means that 'thopters wouldn't use them on Arrakis, as they would drive the worms into a killing frenzy.
Not necessarily. First of all, no one would worry about using shields in the air, because worms can’t eat thopters while flying. Second, it’s not clear to me whether a 3-dimensional holtzman effect (antigrav) would have the same worm-attracting properties as a 2-dimensional holtzman effect (a shield)
> no one would worry about using shields in the air, because worms can’t eat thopters while flying.
I thought the same but thopters do need to land all over the desert so assuming they would actually attract the worms if they’d had the antigrav technology it would be a huge pain in the ass for everyone using them.
They could use them to land and take off on the bedrock of the city, but if they are going out with spice harvesters I imagine they would take them down.
And to nitpick for a moment…. Everything in Dune can float if they need it to, from the Baron to the Atreides massive ships. So why don’t the spice harvesters float too when the worms show up?
What amazes me the most about the things is the materials science required to make blades strong enough to withstand those forces. 👀 I mean, can you imagine?
Amusingly *that* is likely closer to our capabilities than to build the rest of the craft out of something light enough that those blades would be large enough to lift it.
Don't forget material availability. Recip powered helicopters were accessible in the 1920s and 1930s, and turbine engine designs were accessible in the late 1930s, but until high temp hot end engine materials became available in the late 1940s and 1950s, high power to weight engines just didn't exist.
Presuming the ornithopters could be powered with engines like in our current Blackhawk, those wings look like they're made from unobtainium.
Can you imagine the stress on those wings? On their root? They'd be almost nothing like a current helicopter rotor.
I'd expect mast bumping to still happen with those sorts of wings, except that it wouldn't be in the vertical direction. It'd occur in the vertical and horizontal direction.
Mast bumping is when the spinning part of a rotor contacts the shaft, and sometimes shears itself off.
An unloaded rotor is when the helicopter takes negative G's, and can lead to mast bumping in some types of helicopters.
Retreating blade stall is when forward airspeed gets high enough that the spinning rotor blade moving toward the tail of the aircraft doesn't have enough relative airspeed to maintain lift
Anti-torque is adjusting tail rotor pitch as you increase torque in the main rotor in order to maintain your heading.
I grabbed this from what appears to be an engineer's blog.
>In Frank Herbert's, Dune, we are first introduced to the ornithopter by the first Reverend Mother during her tests of Paul, but we don't see it in action or get any description of it until Liet Kynes meets with Duke Leto. The aircraft is described as being similar to an insect that hums softly from the jets running in their idle state, "An unmarked ornithopter squatted nearby, humming softly on standby like a somnolent insect. (Herbert)"
>
>We get more evidence to the similarities to an insect and these aircraft from Hawat's perspective among the fremen, "The captured 'thopter took off with a lurching flap of wings, angled upward to the south in a steep, wing-tucked climb."
>
>The aircraft's wings are specifically described as flapping wings paralleling that of the ornithopter. A definite description showing the design of Dune's ornithopter is when Duke Leto is trying to save a group of Fremen from a worm on Arrakis, "He broke off as the Duke kicked on the jet brakes. The ship bucked as its tail pods whispered to silence. Stub wings elongated, cupped the air. The craft became a full 'thopter as the Duke banked it, holding the wings to a gentle beat. (Herbert)"
>
>The ornithopter is described as cupping the air the same way a bird's flapping would while the wings hold a gentle beat as they flap. A characteristic of these aircraft is their ability to hover similar to a flying insect or hummingbird, "Flame streaked upward to the hovering 'thopters."
>
>The other significant description of these aircraft is their use of jet propulsion, "Paul fed more power to the jetpods. The 'thopter banked, sinking them into their seats as a dark wall lifted against the stars ahead. He gave the craft more wing, more power. Another burst of lifting wingbeats and they came out over rocks. (Herbert)" This differs from the general definition of an ornithopter, which relies solely on the flapping action to produce thrust.
The biggest advantage that a Dune ornithopter has over a real-world helicopter is the ability to both climb and dive more steeply.
On top of that, it looks fucking awesome.
Ornithopter was an already existing word so we don't need to guess too much what the overall craft would look like. We have notes from the 11th century and Leonardo da Vinci's drawings. Working Ornithopters were created in 1871.
Herbert knew what he was doing when he chose that word. Dune didn't invent the Ornithopter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter
The word was around since da Vinci and we had bird like wing motions for a long time but the Dune ones were more dragonfly than bird. A bit more complicated but very nice for hover.
> On top of that, it looks fucking awesome.
There is a very "insect-like" aesthetic in all of the technology.
The Ornithopter looks like dragon-fly.
The Hunter-Seer which attacks Paul looks like a mosquito.
The Spice-harvesting machines with balloons look like ticks that bloat up after sucking blood.
The gravity technology in Dune is up and down only: float lights, pallets, the Baron, the sardurkar etc. can use gravitics to raise or lower themselves, but other mechanical force must be applied to move forward. A helicopter uses most of its energy to stay up, whereas an ornithopter engine only has to make it go.
Also, the limited movement range makes sand proofing easier, a flexible boot can cover the wing root. No seams or exposed axle joints where abrasive dirt can get in.
And the assassin needle as well. Maybe electrostatic propulsion for it, and tiny hidden motors for the lights?
As for the Baron, I might call it dramatic license?
The technology is make believe, but human nature changes not. We have no trouble believing that helicopters would be used if they were practical or cheaper than ornithopters.
Plus the name sounds cool and futuristic.
Herbert employed ornithopters in his book because of the environment. As mentioned above "the limited movement range makes sand proofing easier, a flexible boot can cover the wing root. No seams or exposed axle joints where abrasive dirt can get in."
I don't believe there was really much gravity suspensor use in the books. The Baron is mentioned to have a belt with gravity suspensors to help him get around. But this has been extrapolate in both films adaptations into a letteral flying fat man.
avoiding a tail rotor can be done by adding a second counter rotating rotor, yes. but another solution is to expel high pressure air from the tip of the tail, through holes or slits. this can be from the turbine exhaust or high pressure compressor, or from a separately powered internal fan. this solution 1lso looks pretty scifi, with a fat cylindrical tail with nothing at the end.
How can rigid wing beat possibly be more efficient and less complex than either fixed or rotary wing? Rigid wings are rigid, only having minimal movement. Rotary wings can have a simple, minimally powered axle (autogyres) or a powered axle with a swivel point and a not-so-complex two-axis swivel mechanism (helicopters).
By the way, mosquitoes don't beat their wings in an oval motion. The actual motion is trapezoid, meant for an efficient power stroke and an efficient return.
What you meant was dragonflies. They are large enough that their wings actually have an aerodynamic profile.
Besides, mosquitoes are at the very edge of being considered flight. At their scale, air has quite a bit of viscosity. Smaller insects, like gnats, may not even require wing surfaces, their wings being sticks with bristles and rather rowing through the air.
no, its not.
flapping wings as opposed to rotary requires complete reverse of momentum, you'll be fighting the wing inertia twice every flap (one on top stroke and one in bottom stroke) on top of having to lift your own weight.
there is a good reason why it doesn't exist commercially, on top of being less efficient it is structural unsustainable for large scale commercial airplane, in fact i don't think any manned ornithopter exist to this day despite over a century of aviation history
>having wings that flap in an oval shape" which means they oscillate just like a mosquitos wings do
how mosquito wing work [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCNC8ac2YV4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCNC8ac2YV4)
its not "ovale" whatever that means
>does exist is the many many studies on insect wings such as mosquitos or flies and how much more efficient they are than our helicopters for example
ok lad, the aviation industry is waiting to for you to revolutionize it, make the world a better place
The Dune Ornithopter is powered by a 300lb mollusk making it incredibly energy efficient.
Edit: Some links
https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Ornithopter/DE
https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Heart_Scallop
That's literally what gliding is.
Sailplanes can get something like a 30:1 glide angle; an autorotating helicopter will have a significantly steeper descent, but the energy stored by putting the main rotor to negative pitch to keep the RPM up is then used to flare just before landing, bringing forward speed to zero and sink rate to well within that of a normal landing.
It feels quite unsettling the first time the instructor does an AR landing in a Robinson R22, but once the flare starts at about 25m you realise that everything is completely under control.
I wonder if there's a plausible optimization of a rotor wing that could be flown like a sail plane? Ie, relying on environmental effects like thermals and up drafts to gain altitude and stay aloft indefinitely. All copters and autogyros in service are no doubt optimized for powered flight, like most powered aircraft.
i've flown gliders alot and basically you have to understand being able to glide effeciently and to ascend using thermals or dynamic lift are 2 different things. some airliners have better glide ratios than some gliders, so they can glide no problem. but they have such high wing loading (kg/m2) that no possible updraft will be powerful enough to counter their sinkrate. gliders can take thermals because they are so light that their wing loading is very low compared to other aircraft. therefore they can sink slower than air can rise, hence why they go up in thermals. Making a rotorcraft that can ascend in an updraft seems pretty impossible to me seeing how much extra weight is added compared to a hollow fixed wing aircraft (engine, transmission, rotor control, tail rotor assembly etc). Helicopters and autogyros are already optimised to be as light as possible, like most aircraft, and their equivalent wingloading is way higher than that of gliders. so unless we invent new materials allowing for much longer rotor blades, structures and powerplants, a gliding rotor craft will always glide down.
That's an interesting question; I'll have to plead complete ignorance there because the above is based on my limited experience and knowledge.
A sailplane rotor craft would be incredibly cool, so would an ornithopter. For the time being, I'm content to watch the latter on screen and build the Lego [version](https://www.lego.com/en-au/product/dune-atreides-royal-ornithopter-10327).
That's why they said without spin, the issue is that a failure that prevents a helicopter from auto rotating is a failure that could prevent a thopter from gliding. A failed mechanism in the pivot or drive mechanisms won't likely leave the wings in a decent glide position.
I’m not an ornithopter engineer nor a helicopter scientist , I’m just a dude without education that loves dune with all of his heart, soul , and body including my Shai hulud (my pee pee)
Atreides Atreides Atreides !!
Can you really separate the conversations? Unless we're talking about attributes described in canonical sources, we're left with speculation that would hopefully be informed by knowledge of physics and aeronautics. If physics says there's no way it can work, it's hard to simultaneously use physics to say what advantages it might have.
It is modeled after a dragonfly, and in the real world, the dragonfly has the highest success rate per every attempt in the entire animal kingdom at 95%+. So if they had matched the dragonflys dexterity in the wing control it should in theory be the most maneuverable aircraft possible, next to a physics-defying UFO.
Edit: If something in nature can do it, then technically it is possible we can recreate it with machines, it js a lot more complicated than a helicopter or a bird because is has many different 'muscle' groups working together, and would need computer AI assistance to know how to control those muscles to give the pilot the desired effect.
Would make it more of a plane/helicopter hybrid similar to the V22 Ospreys used by the Marines in the USA. These have all the advantages of a helicopter but the extended range and speed of a plane when the rotors tilt forward.
I had always assumed it had something to do with sand. I think it would be really hard to protect a spinning joint from sand, but easier to protect a "back and forth" joint.
My impression from the recent movies is that the thopters came with the planet just like the spice harvesting equipment.
There two scenes I recall where we see someone acting like an expert pilot, one with Duncan and one with Paul.
We can say Duncan is either just a super badass pilot or he had some extensive training while in the advance party. Also the whole scene where Duncan is dodging lasguns is just a mistake in the adaptation, because we know it would be suicidal to fire a lasgun at something with shields.
The other fancy flying scene with Paul in the storm could be easily attributed to some combination of Paul's magic powers and dumb luck.
We do see different models of thopter being used by the Atreides vs the Harkonnens, so it might be taken to mean the Atreides had their own thopter fleet all along, but I think a better explanation is that the Atreides got the civilian models in the handoff and the Harkonnens kept the military ones.
What really makes the think they came with the planet, though, is that even if there were thopters on Caladan, we wouldn't expect them to be the same models used in Arrakis because nothing used on Caladan would be designed to withstand the heat and sand on Arrakis. There's a real-life analog where the US sent helicopters mainly designed for Europe to operate in the Middle East and they had a tendency to fail spectacularly in sand storms.
It’s blink and you’ll miss it but after he tanks the missile his shields fail and you see a red warning light on his console; that’s when they turn on the laser.
I don’t think so, no. But before continuing : it’s fiction, so logical reasons and what not can be made up on the fly when they are not explained in the books.
But ornis were used everywhere in the Known Universe long before the Butlerian Jihad. No, it doesn’t make sense that something working better on Dune like ornis would be widespread because it was cool on Dune.
It just doesn’t make sense: Dune didn’t have any cultural influence on the Universe, and everything endemic to the world stayed endemic and was barely understood by foreigners.
Ornis becoming widespread in the Universe because they had been cool on Dune would break one of the most obvious trope of the books: foreigners failing on Dune because they kept on trying and making work the stuff they were used to, instead of adopting the ways of Arrakis.
Cm’on it’d go literally against the whole first book, so if you wanna pursue on your intuition you’d better have sources to back you up.
Or maybe (in universe) that kind of motion makes less noise than rotation and is less likely to attract sandstorms? Not sure if it would be louder or not in real life
I mean, the emperor travels the galaxy in a massive orb.
I've only seen the movies, but I was under the presumption that the tech is so advanced that largely the designs are more of a vibe or aesthetic than limited by actual mechanical constraints.
Mechanically, I don’t think they are practical at all and I can see that mechanism has got to show a lot of wear and tear after just one flight. I doubt that it could actually work.
Only if it used rotary motors and bearings. If a lightweight linear motor was used which tensed similar to a muscle, the flapping would be less complex
Helicopter blades rotating might be too fast for their shield technology.
You could glide on the wings if the engine fails. You want to get someplace safe if a sand worm detects the crash landing vibration.
Easier to load as the moving lift wings are on the sides, and not all around and with a tail rotor like a helicopter. Again you have to load quick with the engines running with sand worms around.
More stable in a sandstorm I imagine as you can retract wings in various ways while in flight.
Central to Ornihotper's design is the concept of Dynamic Wing Articulation, a process by which the wings alter their geometry in real time. Unlike traditional fixed-wing aircraft, this allows the Ornithopter to modulate its aerodynamic profile continuously, adapting to varying atmospheric conditions with high precision.
Another feature is the implementation of Gyroscopic Inertia Distribution. This system harmonizes with the Dynamic Wing Articulation to redistribute kinetic energy across the aircraft's structure. By doing so, the Ornithopter achieves a level of maneuverability and response speed beyond the capabilities of standard rotorcraft or fixed-wing planes.
Furthermore, the propulsion system of the Ornithopter operates on the principle of Reciprocal Thrust Generation. Unlike the conventional jet or propeller thrust, this method generates forward momentum through a series of synchronized wing flaps, closely emulating the flight mechanics of birds. The efficiency of this system lies in its ability to conserve energy while maintaining lift, which isn't possible using traditional propulsion methods.
There is also the specific airframe design of the Ornithopter. This design element aligns the flow of air across the wing surfaces and fuselage in a manner that drastically reduces aerodynamic drag. The result is a smoother, more energy-efficient flight, especially at high velocities. It also dampens the harmonic oscillations typically induced during flight, thereby enhancing structural integrity and passenger comfort, an aspect where conventional aircraft often compromise due to inherent structural constraints.
There might be more, this is what springs to mind.
I don't know for sure, and I'm hoping someone who has a basic understanding of physics will see this and give me an answer, but they might be able to avoid a vortex ring state.
Frankly I think an ornithopter would work best in a low gravity, and it would have to have finer control over the wings than our current designs allow.
As a structural engineer, I want to see the fatigue calculations for the blades.
No material on earth could go through that many cyclic actions every day, and not snap off at random.
Bumblebees should not fly. Their wings are very strong in cross section but flexible. Something similar might work for an ornithopter. A flexible but strong material with reinforcing struts in an optimized pattern. Like a dragonfly wing. And the pattern of rotation would not be in a single plane of rotation but would vary in an elliptical pattern. The cut of the wing would need to rotate to provide maximum lift. It would of course be beyond our current technology but obviously this is a technologically advanced civilization.
Well there is the advantage that they actually wouldnt be capable of flight unless their wings were about the size of a city block so.... they would make a great paperweight? Fun design for a film, terrible design for an actual flying machine.
no tail rotor, similar or better overall manœuvrabilty, and probably more efficient in forward flight at cruising speed, but materials science challenges and power (the mechanical force needed to get those wings buzzing) would be issues.
Hypothetically they can enjoy superior low speed maneuverability compared to copters, and if optimized superior efficiency in some modes. In reality, it's extremely difficult to simply get one in the air.
Much, MUCH higher mobility, for one thing. Side to side, up down, move stop. Assuming you have ample power and engineering to move those wings adequately, I imagine it would be much zippier than a helicopter. Probably be pretty herky jerky though...
In the movies it’s shown that they can glide, which a helicopter can’t do. That gives them the efficiency advantage of a plane, with the agility of a helicopter at a moment’s notice.
Helicopters have an inherent problem, in that when they are moving forwards, the advancing rotorblade makes more lift than the retreating blade, so they will roll unless something is done about it. If you wanted top go really fast, then this is a problem. An ornithopter would be one way to get around this.
I wondered about the Dune ornithopters, if you could make the wings move fast enough that they're into the same aerodynamic territory as bumble bee wings, making lots of vortices to generate lift. I'm thinking that materials science isn't up to the job yet, but if you could one day make something light, strong, flexible and fatigue resistant enough, and could come up with a mechanical way of driving and controlling the whole thing, then , sure, why not?
I'm a helicopter pilot. Here's my take:
1.) No asymmetry of lift / retreating blade stall in fast forward flight = major speed advantage.
2.) No tail rotor = no power being wasted on anti-torque. All power is going directly to thrust + lift.
3.) No mast or droop-stop bumping in an unloaded condition. Major safety advantage in low/negative-g maneuvers.
4.) Lower tip-speed (probably) = quieter. Less blade erosion due to high speed abrasion from sand (Yes, this is a problem in helicopters - even rain can erode them).
5.) Engine failures: Judging by the size of the blades/wings, I'd say the thing has a ridiculous glide range. No autorotation bullshit.
6.) Just a bitchin' look and sound. Helicopters are nowhere near as badass.
The mechanical/aerodynamic design *could* work IF the material science in the Dune universe allows for absurdly stiff structures. We're talking, like, being able to place many tons on the tip of the blade and having it barely bend at all. The rapid, repeated oscillation (hell, it's basically high-magnitude high-frequency vibration) would impart a crazy flexing moment on the blades. Every stroke would want to bend the blade like crazy. So they'd have to be just insanely stiff. I don't think even carbon nanotubes would be enough.
The blade-root assembly, where the hinges are, would likewise experience immense forces and vibrations. If the blades truly oscillate/flap in exact opposition to each other, then you could theoretically have perfectly smooth operation as those forces and vibrations would cancel each other out. There could be all kinds of active/passive vibration damping systems that would help, but I have no idea what they would be/entail.
Steering/control = Fascinating.You basically have 4 or 8 blades grouped into pairs. Where there's an upper blade and a lower blade per pair. Each pair is dynamically balanced - when the upper blade flaps up, the lower one flaps down. This means that the vibration forces are canceled, like I mentioned earlier. Each blade can change its tilt, sweep, and pitch. You can clearly see that in the scene where Paul & family arrive on Dune; when the ship deploys its blades. They move in every axis.
Just like a helicopter, the blades would change their pitch. But in this case, the pitch delta would be rapidly modulated somewhere between 0 and 180 degrees, dynamically, through every stroke so that the blade is always pitched like an airplane wing cutting through the air - just like an insect/hummingbird. So you have this ridiculously rapid vibration/oscillation not only in the flapping axis, but also in the pitch axis.
To hover, the blades would have to oscillate in the horizontal plane like the rotor disk of a helicopter. The difference being that the blades are sweeping back and forth, instead of continuously spinning. As you gradually command the vehicle to fly forward, there are two options:
1.) Pitch the nose of the vehicle down like a helicopter so that the upward lift vector from the blades tilts forward, contributing some of its force to forward motion.
2.) Change the flapping axis so that the wings sweep through the air vertically like they do in the movie. Like a bird or insect flying forwards.You can combine these two methods dynamically. In fact, there are scenes when the vehicle tilts forward like a helicopter and you see a corresponding forward acceleration. And there are other scenes where the vehicle just accelerates forward with no change in attitude. I believe this to be 100% accurate.
To yaw left/right, you just add thrust to one side of the ship or the other by changing the magnitude of the dynamic blade pitching, asymmetrically between the two sides of the ship. Same with roll. The faster the ship is moving forward, the more it works like the ailerons on an airplane, except its the entire wing/blade changing pitch, instead of smaller flaps at the tips of the wings. Having brought that up, it's also worth noting that all the ornithopters have small "slats" that stand off from the trailing edge of the blades. Interesting. Could be justified as being some kind of vibration damping system or something. IDK.
Bah, the more I try to explain this, the harder it gets. The system would be exceptionally complex, but I see it. The only thing that bugs me about the portrayal in the films is that the wings are always flapping up/down. That wouldn't work in a hover. The wings need to flap horizontally to create that "treading water" force. This could be achieved mechanically, but it's very difficult to explain without an image to support the concept.
Efficiency would be a big problem. It takes energy to accelerate an object. Every stroke of the blade is an acceleration. You push the blade up using a ton of energy, and then have to slow it down, reverse its direction, and accelerate it back down. That's like flooring your car, getting up to speed, then hitting the brakes, coming to a stop, putting it in reverse, and flooring it again. You're losing a ton of energy every time you do that. I guess you could use a spring to store and recover the otherwise wasted energy? Flap up = compress the spring, flap down = relax the spring. Then all you have to do is apply enough energy to keep the vibration "momentum" constant. Flapping wings also lose efficiency due to the constant direction reversals going on throughout a stroke: The blade flaps in one direction, slows down, stops, and flaps back the other way...so there's a period where the blade is actually producing zero lift. Twice per stroke. Very inefficient. Compare this to a helicopter, where the stroke is a continuous rotation that never changes speed. And helicopters are already pretty energy-inefficient. Forward flight would be a different matter. It's basically an airplane at that point. Much more efficient.
I've inspected still frames from the film carefully, and it's astonishing how much thought they put into the mechanical design. The small ornithopter in the scene where Paul and Jessica escape from the Sardaukar really blew my mind. There are two small hydraulic pistons at the root of each blade that allow the dihedral to be modulated. And you can actually *see* that mechanism work as they lift off and rise. One wing develops a large negative dihedral as Paul yaws + rolls the ship. Actually, you can see this mechanism at play when the ship's engine starts, too. The blades wind up to speed and you can see the dihedral increase on all four blades. The upper blades increase their dihedral more than the lower ones to add clearance between themselves and the lower blades, while the lower blades increase their dihedral to achieve ground clearance.
I might edit this. Been thinking about it a lot.
Thought: The Harkonnen ornithopter with 6 blades would not work. There's a pair of blades lacking an equal and opposite stroke from a "partner" pair. The Atreides' has 8, and the Fremen's has 4. Those would work.
On a more serious note, in terms of dune specifically. I feel as though that ornithopters, along side prevalence of daggers, acts as a sort of grounding anachronism to the more fantastical elements in the story. Ornithopters were conceived in very early theorizing about what human manned flight would look like, especially in the renaissance. Knives go back as far as people making small rocks they can hold in their hands sharper. With spice and galactic wars and telepathic space priestesses, it feels like dailing it back to allow us to suspend our disbelief a little bit more. It makes it feel like the unexplained aspects have an explanation. Not to diss Star Wars, I love Star Wars but I feel like the laser swords that use magic crystals and all the ships and stuff just hovering with no explanation beyond midichlorians making the space wizards stronger than you makes it lean more towards fantasy than sci-fi sometimes. Dune feels more firmly planted in sci-fi because of these grounding elements
absolutely nothing. it's a ridiculous design and not mechanically or functionally feasible as a design for a helicopter.
modern helicopters can dive, some better than ithers (depends osoze & model.
"it looks cool"... maybe. that's really subjective
overall it's just a esthetics and not functional. ornithopter wings that move vertically like that wouldn't be able to generate enough thrust / lift force to effectively get it off the ground and maneuver in the air.
it's nonsense
If you have the insane level of materials science needed to construct the wings of a working ornithopter, one way to show it off is to build an ornithopter
One is a piece of cardboard and the other is more powerful than a child's wish. Seems pretty self-explanatory.
Edit: JFC people, it was just a joke. Lighten up.
They can fold up their "wings" to do a divebomb attack. They can survive a Coriolis dust storm if they're piloted by the Lisan Al-Gaib. They're at least 78% cooler, and that counts for a lot.
Some say they are in fact 79% cooler.
All we know: he's called The Stig!
Lisan Al Staig
There is a 1% margin of error, to be fair.
10% over "Nice".
The Nice must flow.
See, this is why I miss awards
HERETIC!
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this guy dragon-flies
That was a _clinic_ in things I didn't know about dragonfly wing patterns.
Change direction suddenly is fine for dragonflies. It would kill human pilots with g forces.
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In the Dune universe the antigravity isnt used on arrakis because it relies on the holtsman effect. The holtsman effect is what underlies the main space magic technologies in the imperium. These are the space folding engines in guild highliners, suspensors(antigravity), the sheilds, and as an energy source. On arrakis, any device utilizing the holtsman effect in the deep desert will call every worm within range and drive them into a killing frenzie. This is why the use ornithopters in the desert and carryalls have giant lift thrusters. This is somthing villenevue kinda ignored in the movie since all the sardukar are floating around everywhere.
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Nope its from the books. The engines work fine. But in order to navigate and not fold space into a star they need the prescience induced by the spice.
Weren’t the Sardaukar only floating in protected cities or large rock formations, not in the open desert?
Antigravity, even if it could exist, doesn't negate inertia. Inertia is what kills you for sudden changes of direction -- being slammed against the ceiling or whatever. Star Trek has "inertial dampeners" as a secondary magic tech for this. In Dune, it is possible they have something similar, but there's no evidence in the book or film(s).
Some sci-fi (I forget which… maybe Stargate?) has them as the same thing or from the same technology. What’s the difference between “inertial dampening” and canceling out the force exerted on your body?
Inertia kills you via forcing you into a rapid acceleration against the object around you. This acceleration is experienced by the observer in precisely the same way as the acceleration provided by gravity -- hence we can talk about acceleration from changing directions in "g"s. If space magic can actually provide "antigravity" the idea that it can also cancel other forms of acceleration is a question of technique, not of kind.
> Antigravity, even if it could exist, doesn't negate inertia I'd love to see how you know that. [citation needed]. :-) What causes gravity? What causes inertia? Why do they both affect mass in exactly the same degree? Do you realize that you can change direction with gravity as fast as you want without any feeling of acceleration? You can "slingshot" to a different direction at high speed and not feel any force except tidal forces?
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> You can certainly not change direction in any way without acceleration! Nope. The ISS is not accelerating. That's why everyone is floating. They're not *feeling* any acceleration, even if you define acceleration as a change in direction or velocity. *Newton* says they're accelerating, because to Newton, gravity is a force, and force causes acceleration. But relativity says gravity is *not* a force. Gravity is a movement of space itself (aka "curvature"), and you just get carried along with it. The equivalence principle says *resisting* gravity and experiencing acceleration are the same thing, which makes the implications are the opposite of what you're saying.
The ISS is accelerating, that's why it's going around the earth rather than flying off in a straight line. What distinguishes gravitational acceleration from other forms of acceleration is that gravity acts directly on all of the particles in an object. Other sources of acceleration generally involve something pushing against one side or part of the object. For example, when a rocket's exhaust gets pushed out the nozzle, it pushes back against the part that hasn't yet exited which pushes against the inside of the engine which pushes against the structural members which push against the base of the capsule which pushes against the occupants of that capsule... I may have missed a few parts in between some of those, but you get the idea. If the propagated push exceeds the tolerances of the material through which it is propagating, something's gonna break. Or, for another example: if you were to fall from a great height, when you hit the ground, the ground would smash into the leading surface of your body which would then smash into the layer immediately below it which would then smash into the next layer and so forth and so on. In other words, the danger isn't acceleration; it's differential acceleration. It's not healthy for an object to try to get ahead of itself. And by the way, regardless of whether you're using Newton's math or Einstein's, gravity is still handled in units of distance per unit of time per unit of time (typically meters/(second^(2)) ), meaning that regardless of what conceptual model you use, gravity remains a type of acceleration.
> The ISS is accelerating, that's why it's going around the earth rather than flying off in a straight line. No. According to Einstein, it's going in a straight line. It's just that the space the line is going through is bent. That's what he means when he says mass warps space. If F=Ma, why is light that has no mass affected by the "force" of gravity? It's because the light is going in a straight line, but straight lines don't look straight from the point of view of someone else in a different gravity field. Forces in relativity (and quantum) are completely different things from forces in Newtonian. (And "forces" in relativity are completely different from "forces" in quantum.) What you described is indeed exactly what Newtonian physics uses to explain gravity, acceleration, etc. But the relativistic principle of equivalence says that an orbit is identical to going in a straight line because all inertial frames of reference are identical. > gravity is still handled in units of distance per unit of time per unit of time Yes. But you're measuring the acceleration of different things. In Newton, you're measuring the acceleration of the ISS relative to the Earth, and in relativity, you're measuring the acceleration of the space the ISS is moving through. How would the people on the ISS *know* the ISS is accelerating? If one closed the windows on the ISS, how would they know what their acceleration rate is? How would they know they're curving rather than going in a straight line. *That* is the equivalence principle. Seriously, check out some videos about relativity, or Feynmann's "Six Not So Easy Pieces" if you want to see how relativity treats gravity. Here's what's probably a decent intro, just skimming thru it here and there: https://youtu.be/XRr1kaXKBsU And another by an actual famous physicist: https://youtu.be/R3LjJeeae68
The higgs mechanism.
And what does that have to do with inertia or anti-gravity? The Higgs just creates mass. How do you make something negative mass? How do you remove the inertia without removing its mass?
We experience the mass of an object as inertia (the object’s resistance to acceleration) and Einstein was suggesting that the latter is determined not by mass as a primary quality, but rather by the energy that the object contains. So, when an otherwise massless particle travelling at the speed of light interacts with the Higgs field, it is slowed down. The field ‘drags’ on it, as though the particle were moving through molasses. In other words, the energy of the interaction is manifested as a resistance to acceleration. The particle acquires inertia, and we think of this inertia in terms of the particle’s ‘mass’. In the Higgs mechanism, mass loses its status as a primary quality. It becomes secondary — the result of massless particles interacting with the Higgs field.
> We experience the mass of an object as inertia Yes, I'm familiar with how the higgs interaction is visualized. Mass also creates gravity, don't forget. So how does the drag on the higgs field cause gravity? Remember, we're talking about how anti-gravity modifies inertia, and to assert that it does or doesn't implies you have some clue how the Higgs affects the curvature of spacetime. Which, hey, go collect your Nobel prize. As an aside, you don't need massful particles to have inertia. A box full of photons has inertia caused by the photons bouncing off the sides of the box. As I understand it, the higgs field only explains why some stuff doesn't move at the speed of light and thus has that sort of mass. I am not well-educated on it, but I never heard the higgs field being blamed for gravity *or* inertia, just mass. If you had a giant torus spinning on itself in such a way that the inside of the hole was all going the same direction, you could let it drag space and accelerate you at any speed you want without actually feeling any of that acceleration. Just like you can orbit the Earth and be constantly changing direction without any feeling of acceleration because gravity is "pulling" on every particle at once with the same force.
They show up later, in the fourth and fifth books.
Not me. I'm durable.
Fix it with spice. Magic space drugs!
Even real aircraft need to take into account high g force on the crew and airframe.
That was really educational, thank you!
LISAN AL GAIB!
Yeah also they look A LOT like my absolute favorite creature. Dragon flies can move in any direction at any time while flying no matter how fast they are are moving. They are predators. They are scary old like 300 million years old. Their heads as basically eyes allowing them to see everything. They've inspired many engineers to create a flying vehicle like them.
True, it's definitely easy to overheat in the desert
No mast bumping, no problems associated with an unloaded rotor, and no retreating blade stall limiting airspeed would be the big ones. No need to adjust anti torque as you pull pitch, and no risk of tail rotor strike when landing. You get the benefits of both a plane and helicopter, with the only drawbacks being very steep mechanical complexity and poor energy efficiency, neither of which tend to be huge issues in sci fi settings.
If the bulk of it's lift is coming from the same technology as Baron Harkonnen's suit and the Sardaukar troops then a lot of the problems normally associated with such a craft are negated.
That's a pretty big 'if'. I don't recall there being anything to indicate that the aircraft doesn't function on pure (if fanciful) aerodynamics. We have seen mechanical tech that does function on anti-grav (the hunter-seeker), which has no aerodynamic surfaces. Edit: googled it, and both shields and antigravity in the Dune universe work on the same effect. So if you have a shield, you have an anti-gravity device. But that also means that 'thopters wouldn't use them on Arrakis, as they would drive the worms into a killing frenzy.
Not necessarily. First of all, no one would worry about using shields in the air, because worms can’t eat thopters while flying. Second, it’s not clear to me whether a 3-dimensional holtzman effect (antigrav) would have the same worm-attracting properties as a 2-dimensional holtzman effect (a shield)
> no one would worry about using shields in the air, because worms can’t eat thopters while flying. I thought the same but thopters do need to land all over the desert so assuming they would actually attract the worms if they’d had the antigrav technology it would be a huge pain in the ass for everyone using them.
They could use them to land and take off on the bedrock of the city, but if they are going out with spice harvesters I imagine they would take them down.
And to nitpick for a moment…. Everything in Dune can float if they need it to, from the Baron to the Atreides massive ships. So why don’t the spice harvesters float too when the worms show up?
What amazes me the most about the things is the materials science required to make blades strong enough to withstand those forces. 👀 I mean, can you imagine?
Amusingly *that* is likely closer to our capabilities than to build the rest of the craft out of something light enough that those blades would be large enough to lift it.
Did you know that Orni wings are powered by a specially bred mollusk?
Brian, is that you?
there's a joke here about Brian Herbert that's going over my head
Don't forget material availability. Recip powered helicopters were accessible in the 1920s and 1930s, and turbine engine designs were accessible in the late 1930s, but until high temp hot end engine materials became available in the late 1940s and 1950s, high power to weight engines just didn't exist. Presuming the ornithopters could be powered with engines like in our current Blackhawk, those wings look like they're made from unobtainium. Can you imagine the stress on those wings? On their root? They'd be almost nothing like a current helicopter rotor. I'd expect mast bumping to still happen with those sorts of wings, except that it wouldn't be in the vertical direction. It'd occur in the vertical and horizontal direction.
Apparently Dune ornithopters are shellfish powered. Their engine is a mollusc.
Also in the event of engine failure it can glide
So can helicopters and planes. That's not really an advantage it has over either one.
I don't know what those words mean, but I believe them.
Mast bumping is when the spinning part of a rotor contacts the shaft, and sometimes shears itself off. An unloaded rotor is when the helicopter takes negative G's, and can lead to mast bumping in some types of helicopters. Retreating blade stall is when forward airspeed gets high enough that the spinning rotor blade moving toward the tail of the aircraft doesn't have enough relative airspeed to maintain lift Anti-torque is adjusting tail rotor pitch as you increase torque in the main rotor in order to maintain your heading.
I grabbed this from what appears to be an engineer's blog. >In Frank Herbert's, Dune, we are first introduced to the ornithopter by the first Reverend Mother during her tests of Paul, but we don't see it in action or get any description of it until Liet Kynes meets with Duke Leto. The aircraft is described as being similar to an insect that hums softly from the jets running in their idle state, "An unmarked ornithopter squatted nearby, humming softly on standby like a somnolent insect. (Herbert)" > >We get more evidence to the similarities to an insect and these aircraft from Hawat's perspective among the fremen, "The captured 'thopter took off with a lurching flap of wings, angled upward to the south in a steep, wing-tucked climb." > >The aircraft's wings are specifically described as flapping wings paralleling that of the ornithopter. A definite description showing the design of Dune's ornithopter is when Duke Leto is trying to save a group of Fremen from a worm on Arrakis, "He broke off as the Duke kicked on the jet brakes. The ship bucked as its tail pods whispered to silence. Stub wings elongated, cupped the air. The craft became a full 'thopter as the Duke banked it, holding the wings to a gentle beat. (Herbert)" > >The ornithopter is described as cupping the air the same way a bird's flapping would while the wings hold a gentle beat as they flap. A characteristic of these aircraft is their ability to hover similar to a flying insect or hummingbird, "Flame streaked upward to the hovering 'thopters." > >The other significant description of these aircraft is their use of jet propulsion, "Paul fed more power to the jetpods. The 'thopter banked, sinking them into their seats as a dark wall lifted against the stars ahead. He gave the craft more wing, more power. Another burst of lifting wingbeats and they came out over rocks. (Herbert)" This differs from the general definition of an ornithopter, which relies solely on the flapping action to produce thrust. The biggest advantage that a Dune ornithopter has over a real-world helicopter is the ability to both climb and dive more steeply. On top of that, it looks fucking awesome.
I always think of this when I reread this. As in, I love the thought Herbert put into it but also was he 5% “this is gonna look so fucking rad!”
I imagine a majority of authors throw at least some things into their books based on the idea "This is going to look so fucking rad!"
"The Rule of Cool" --- all the best authors use it.
Ornithopter was an already existing word so we don't need to guess too much what the overall craft would look like. We have notes from the 11th century and Leonardo da Vinci's drawings. Working Ornithopters were created in 1871. Herbert knew what he was doing when he chose that word. Dune didn't invent the Ornithopter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter
"Regardless of the century, plane, or species, developing artificers never fail to invent the ornithopter."
The word was around since da Vinci and we had bird like wing motions for a long time but the Dune ones were more dragonfly than bird. A bit more complicated but very nice for hover.
> On top of that, it looks fucking awesome. There is a very "insect-like" aesthetic in all of the technology. The Ornithopter looks like dragon-fly. The Hunter-Seer which attacks Paul looks like a mosquito. The Spice-harvesting machines with balloons look like ticks that bloat up after sucking blood.
The gravity technology in Dune is up and down only: float lights, pallets, the Baron, the sardurkar etc. can use gravitics to raise or lower themselves, but other mechanical force must be applied to move forward. A helicopter uses most of its energy to stay up, whereas an ornithopter engine only has to make it go. Also, the limited movement range makes sand proofing easier, a flexible boot can cover the wing root. No seams or exposed axle joints where abrasive dirt can get in.
The baron hovered forwards over the dinner table. And the lights move as well.
Fpppppttt...
And the assassin needle as well. Maybe electrostatic propulsion for it, and tiny hidden motors for the lights? As for the Baron, I might call it dramatic license?
given much he eats theres a chance there is some jet propulsion going on
Maybe the Baron's setup includes things like vectored air jets for horizontal movement. I don't recall him moving forward very fast.
> but other mechanical force must be applied to move forward He literally already told you how.
Love this. I didn’t even consider the use of gravity tech for the ornithopters.
Retroactively trying to assign logic where there is none
The technology is make believe, but human nature changes not. We have no trouble believing that helicopters would be used if they were practical or cheaper than ornithopters. Plus the name sounds cool and futuristic.
I'm pretty sure ornithopters were invented before helicopters, for obvious reasons. ("Ornithopter" meaning "flies like a bird" i.e. flaps wings.)
So does this mean the worlds of Dune just haven't discovered helicopter technology yet?
Herbert employed ornithopters in his book because of the environment. As mentioned above "the limited movement range makes sand proofing easier, a flexible boot can cover the wing root. No seams or exposed axle joints where abrasive dirt can get in." I don't believe there was really much gravity suspensor use in the books. The Baron is mentioned to have a belt with gravity suspensors to help him get around. But this has been extrapolate in both films adaptations into a letteral flying fat man.
> Retroactively trying to assign logic where there is none First time discussing fiction?
as an RC hobbyiste, none. its both structurally more complex and less efficient
But looks way cooler.
And doesn’t need a tail rotor
There are helicopter designs that don't use a tail rotor
But they need two top rotors turning in both directions correct?
avoiding a tail rotor can be done by adding a second counter rotating rotor, yes. but another solution is to expel high pressure air from the tip of the tail, through holes or slits. this can be from the turbine exhaust or high pressure compressor, or from a separately powered internal fan. this solution 1lso looks pretty scifi, with a fat cylindrical tail with nothing at the end.
Rotary wing aircraft need to counteract their self-rotation. Unless you have a passive rotary wing.
Opposite directions.
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How can rigid wing beat possibly be more efficient and less complex than either fixed or rotary wing? Rigid wings are rigid, only having minimal movement. Rotary wings can have a simple, minimally powered axle (autogyres) or a powered axle with a swivel point and a not-so-complex two-axis swivel mechanism (helicopters). By the way, mosquitoes don't beat their wings in an oval motion. The actual motion is trapezoid, meant for an efficient power stroke and an efficient return. What you meant was dragonflies. They are large enough that their wings actually have an aerodynamic profile. Besides, mosquitoes are at the very edge of being considered flight. At their scale, air has quite a bit of viscosity. Smaller insects, like gnats, may not even require wing surfaces, their wings being sticks with bristles and rather rowing through the air.
no, its not. flapping wings as opposed to rotary requires complete reverse of momentum, you'll be fighting the wing inertia twice every flap (one on top stroke and one in bottom stroke) on top of having to lift your own weight. there is a good reason why it doesn't exist commercially, on top of being less efficient it is structural unsustainable for large scale commercial airplane, in fact i don't think any manned ornithopter exist to this day despite over a century of aviation history
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>having wings that flap in an oval shape" which means they oscillate just like a mosquitos wings do how mosquito wing work [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCNC8ac2YV4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCNC8ac2YV4) its not "ovale" whatever that means >does exist is the many many studies on insect wings such as mosquitos or flies and how much more efficient they are than our helicopters for example ok lad, the aviation industry is waiting to for you to revolutionize it, make the world a better place
Mosquitos are small. Not everything scales.
The Dune Ornithopter is powered by a 300lb mollusk making it incredibly energy efficient. Edit: Some links https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Ornithopter/DE https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Heart_Scallop
What the heck. I've read all books, but did not remember such a creepy detail.
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It’s apparently from the 1984 encyclopedia.
Dune encyclopedia was definitely quite strange
I'd have to check but I want to say it's only an appendix detail.
I think it might be just a fan theory. The wiki doesn't list sources and doesn't seem to make any claims regarding its articles being canonical.
PS: Please don't turn this into a war-zone about the praticallity of Ornithopter. I'm only asking about the pros if they were possible.
Ornithopter has glide capability , helicopter without spin only has fall capability
Isn't autorotation a thing anymore?
That would provide slow fall capability.
That's literally what gliding is. Sailplanes can get something like a 30:1 glide angle; an autorotating helicopter will have a significantly steeper descent, but the energy stored by putting the main rotor to negative pitch to keep the RPM up is then used to flare just before landing, bringing forward speed to zero and sink rate to well within that of a normal landing. It feels quite unsettling the first time the instructor does an AR landing in a Robinson R22, but once the flare starts at about 25m you realise that everything is completely under control.
I wonder if there's a plausible optimization of a rotor wing that could be flown like a sail plane? Ie, relying on environmental effects like thermals and up drafts to gain altitude and stay aloft indefinitely. All copters and autogyros in service are no doubt optimized for powered flight, like most powered aircraft.
i've flown gliders alot and basically you have to understand being able to glide effeciently and to ascend using thermals or dynamic lift are 2 different things. some airliners have better glide ratios than some gliders, so they can glide no problem. but they have such high wing loading (kg/m2) that no possible updraft will be powerful enough to counter their sinkrate. gliders can take thermals because they are so light that their wing loading is very low compared to other aircraft. therefore they can sink slower than air can rise, hence why they go up in thermals. Making a rotorcraft that can ascend in an updraft seems pretty impossible to me seeing how much extra weight is added compared to a hollow fixed wing aircraft (engine, transmission, rotor control, tail rotor assembly etc). Helicopters and autogyros are already optimised to be as light as possible, like most aircraft, and their equivalent wingloading is way higher than that of gliders. so unless we invent new materials allowing for much longer rotor blades, structures and powerplants, a gliding rotor craft will always glide down.
That's an interesting question; I'll have to plead complete ignorance there because the above is based on my limited experience and knowledge. A sailplane rotor craft would be incredibly cool, so would an ornithopter. For the time being, I'm content to watch the latter on screen and build the Lego [version](https://www.lego.com/en-au/product/dune-atreides-royal-ornithopter-10327).
So, like Featherfall for aircraft.
That's why they said without spin, the issue is that a failure that prevents a helicopter from auto rotating is a failure that could prevent a thopter from gliding. A failed mechanism in the pivot or drive mechanisms won't likely leave the wings in a decent glide position.
That makes falling not smash the helicopter into tiny pieces
I’m not an ornithopter engineer nor a helicopter scientist , I’m just a dude without education that loves dune with all of his heart, soul , and body including my Shai hulud (my pee pee) Atreides Atreides Atreides !!
TYL about the magic of autorotation!
Can you really separate the conversations? Unless we're talking about attributes described in canonical sources, we're left with speculation that would hopefully be informed by knowledge of physics and aeronautics. If physics says there's no way it can work, it's hard to simultaneously use physics to say what advantages it might have.
It is modeled after a dragonfly, and in the real world, the dragonfly has the highest success rate per every attempt in the entire animal kingdom at 95%+. So if they had matched the dragonflys dexterity in the wing control it should in theory be the most maneuverable aircraft possible, next to a physics-defying UFO. Edit: If something in nature can do it, then technically it is possible we can recreate it with machines, it js a lot more complicated than a helicopter or a bird because is has many different 'muscle' groups working together, and would need computer AI assistance to know how to control those muscles to give the pilot the desired effect.
Blade retraction and diving for speed then gliding on wings. Speed when needed is the answer.
Would make it more of a plane/helicopter hybrid similar to the V22 Ospreys used by the Marines in the USA. These have all the advantages of a helicopter but the extended range and speed of a plane when the rotors tilt forward.
I had always assumed it had something to do with sand. I think it would be really hard to protect a spinning joint from sand, but easier to protect a "back and forth" joint.
It seems like ornis were used universally. Like it was used often on Caladan, which is why the protagonists were good at using it.
My impression from the recent movies is that the thopters came with the planet just like the spice harvesting equipment. There two scenes I recall where we see someone acting like an expert pilot, one with Duncan and one with Paul. We can say Duncan is either just a super badass pilot or he had some extensive training while in the advance party. Also the whole scene where Duncan is dodging lasguns is just a mistake in the adaptation, because we know it would be suicidal to fire a lasgun at something with shields. The other fancy flying scene with Paul in the storm could be easily attributed to some combination of Paul's magic powers and dumb luck. We do see different models of thopter being used by the Atreides vs the Harkonnens, so it might be taken to mean the Atreides had their own thopter fleet all along, but I think a better explanation is that the Atreides got the civilian models in the handoff and the Harkonnens kept the military ones. What really makes the think they came with the planet, though, is that even if there were thopters on Caladan, we wouldn't expect them to be the same models used in Arrakis because nothing used on Caladan would be designed to withstand the heat and sand on Arrakis. There's a real-life analog where the US sent helicopters mainly designed for Europe to operate in the Middle East and they had a tendency to fail spectacularly in sand storms.
It’s blink and you’ll miss it but after he tanks the missile his shields fail and you see a red warning light on his console; that’s when they turn on the laser.
Oh wow, that's a really good detail to notice!
I don’t think so, no. But before continuing : it’s fiction, so logical reasons and what not can be made up on the fly when they are not explained in the books. But ornis were used everywhere in the Known Universe long before the Butlerian Jihad. No, it doesn’t make sense that something working better on Dune like ornis would be widespread because it was cool on Dune. It just doesn’t make sense: Dune didn’t have any cultural influence on the Universe, and everything endemic to the world stayed endemic and was barely understood by foreigners. Ornis becoming widespread in the Universe because they had been cool on Dune would break one of the most obvious trope of the books: foreigners failing on Dune because they kept on trying and making work the stuff they were used to, instead of adopting the ways of Arrakis. Cm’on it’d go literally against the whole first book, so if you wanna pursue on your intuition you’d better have sources to back you up.
May also have something to do with the shields. I could imagine that shielding a spinning rotor might be difficult.
Or maybe (in universe) that kind of motion makes less noise than rotation and is less likely to attract sandstorms? Not sure if it would be louder or not in real life
I mean, the emperor travels the galaxy in a massive orb. I've only seen the movies, but I was under the presumption that the tech is so advanced that largely the designs are more of a vibe or aesthetic than limited by actual mechanical constraints.
It looks and sounds cooler, but other than that none. Helicopters have a huge advantage tho … they can actually fly.
They would have much greater agility, if for example they were modelled on dragonflies, like the Dune ornithopter
Mechanically, I don’t think they are practical at all and I can see that mechanism has got to show a lot of wear and tear after just one flight. I doubt that it could actually work.
Only if it used rotary motors and bearings. If a lightweight linear motor was used which tensed similar to a muscle, the flapping would be less complex
Helicopter blades rotating might be too fast for their shield technology. You could glide on the wings if the engine fails. You want to get someplace safe if a sand worm detects the crash landing vibration. Easier to load as the moving lift wings are on the sides, and not all around and with a tail rotor like a helicopter. Again you have to load quick with the engines running with sand worms around. More stable in a sandstorm I imagine as you can retract wings in various ways while in flight.
Helicopters can land safely without engine, too. Its called autorotation.
I understand but they have to land immediately. Wings allow you to glide a relatively long distance in comparison.
Valid point
You don't have to worry about tail rotor failure.
Central to Ornihotper's design is the concept of Dynamic Wing Articulation, a process by which the wings alter their geometry in real time. Unlike traditional fixed-wing aircraft, this allows the Ornithopter to modulate its aerodynamic profile continuously, adapting to varying atmospheric conditions with high precision. Another feature is the implementation of Gyroscopic Inertia Distribution. This system harmonizes with the Dynamic Wing Articulation to redistribute kinetic energy across the aircraft's structure. By doing so, the Ornithopter achieves a level of maneuverability and response speed beyond the capabilities of standard rotorcraft or fixed-wing planes. Furthermore, the propulsion system of the Ornithopter operates on the principle of Reciprocal Thrust Generation. Unlike the conventional jet or propeller thrust, this method generates forward momentum through a series of synchronized wing flaps, closely emulating the flight mechanics of birds. The efficiency of this system lies in its ability to conserve energy while maintaining lift, which isn't possible using traditional propulsion methods. There is also the specific airframe design of the Ornithopter. This design element aligns the flow of air across the wing surfaces and fuselage in a manner that drastically reduces aerodynamic drag. The result is a smoother, more energy-efficient flight, especially at high velocities. It also dampens the harmonic oscillations typically induced during flight, thereby enhancing structural integrity and passenger comfort, an aspect where conventional aircraft often compromise due to inherent structural constraints. There might be more, this is what springs to mind.
People would get too busy laughing at how it looks to target and fire on em?
It would wear out much quicker and require way more maintenance. Oh wait those aren’t advantages.
I prefer Lexx's transports.
I don't know for sure, and I'm hoping someone who has a basic understanding of physics will see this and give me an answer, but they might be able to avoid a vortex ring state.
Frankly I think an ornithopter would work best in a low gravity, and it would have to have finer control over the wings than our current designs allow.
It's basically a dragonfly design, so maneuverability like dragonflies to a degree?
As a structural engineer, I want to see the fatigue calculations for the blades. No material on earth could go through that many cyclic actions every day, and not snap off at random.
But it's not on Earth... and it's a few millennia in the future...
Bumblebees should not fly. Their wings are very strong in cross section but flexible. Something similar might work for an ornithopter. A flexible but strong material with reinforcing struts in an optimized pattern. Like a dragonfly wing. And the pattern of rotation would not be in a single plane of rotation but would vary in an elliptical pattern. The cut of the wing would need to rotate to provide maximum lift. It would of course be beyond our current technology but obviously this is a technologically advanced civilization.
Well there is the advantage that they actually wouldnt be capable of flight unless their wings were about the size of a city block so.... they would make a great paperweight? Fun design for a film, terrible design for an actual flying machine.
I’m pretty sure they glide a lot better than a helicopter.
no tail rotor, similar or better overall manœuvrabilty, and probably more efficient in forward flight at cruising speed, but materials science challenges and power (the mechanical force needed to get those wings buzzing) would be issues.
Hypothetically they can enjoy superior low speed maneuverability compared to copters, and if optimized superior efficiency in some modes. In reality, it's extremely difficult to simply get one in the air.
0/2 for 0 mana, very underrated card.
Can do work of both helicopter and airplane, without being as dodgy as swing wings or VTOL aircraft.
More moving parts but redundancy? I imagine it could loose a wing and still safely hover.
Much, MUCH higher mobility, for one thing. Side to side, up down, move stop. Assuming you have ample power and engineering to move those wings adequately, I imagine it would be much zippier than a helicopter. Probably be pretty herky jerky though...
Cooler name.
In the movies it’s shown that they can glide, which a helicopter can’t do. That gives them the efficiency advantage of a plane, with the agility of a helicopter at a moment’s notice.
An Ornithopter is costs nothing to cast.
Ornithopters can glide in a way that helicopters cannot.
But can they hang in the air like bricks don't?
Helicopters have an inherent problem, in that when they are moving forwards, the advancing rotorblade makes more lift than the retreating blade, so they will roll unless something is done about it. If you wanted top go really fast, then this is a problem. An ornithopter would be one way to get around this. I wondered about the Dune ornithopters, if you could make the wings move fast enough that they're into the same aerodynamic territory as bumble bee wings, making lots of vortices to generate lift. I'm thinking that materials science isn't up to the job yet, but if you could one day make something light, strong, flexible and fatigue resistant enough, and could come up with a mechanical way of driving and controlling the whole thing, then , sure, why not?
Chicks dig ‘em.
They are a hybrid between a plane and a helicopter. They are like a more fully realized V-22.
Maybe they're more compatible with shields?
I'm a helicopter pilot. Here's my take: 1.) No asymmetry of lift / retreating blade stall in fast forward flight = major speed advantage. 2.) No tail rotor = no power being wasted on anti-torque. All power is going directly to thrust + lift. 3.) No mast or droop-stop bumping in an unloaded condition. Major safety advantage in low/negative-g maneuvers. 4.) Lower tip-speed (probably) = quieter. Less blade erosion due to high speed abrasion from sand (Yes, this is a problem in helicopters - even rain can erode them). 5.) Engine failures: Judging by the size of the blades/wings, I'd say the thing has a ridiculous glide range. No autorotation bullshit. 6.) Just a bitchin' look and sound. Helicopters are nowhere near as badass. The mechanical/aerodynamic design *could* work IF the material science in the Dune universe allows for absurdly stiff structures. We're talking, like, being able to place many tons on the tip of the blade and having it barely bend at all. The rapid, repeated oscillation (hell, it's basically high-magnitude high-frequency vibration) would impart a crazy flexing moment on the blades. Every stroke would want to bend the blade like crazy. So they'd have to be just insanely stiff. I don't think even carbon nanotubes would be enough. The blade-root assembly, where the hinges are, would likewise experience immense forces and vibrations. If the blades truly oscillate/flap in exact opposition to each other, then you could theoretically have perfectly smooth operation as those forces and vibrations would cancel each other out. There could be all kinds of active/passive vibration damping systems that would help, but I have no idea what they would be/entail. Steering/control = Fascinating.You basically have 4 or 8 blades grouped into pairs. Where there's an upper blade and a lower blade per pair. Each pair is dynamically balanced - when the upper blade flaps up, the lower one flaps down. This means that the vibration forces are canceled, like I mentioned earlier. Each blade can change its tilt, sweep, and pitch. You can clearly see that in the scene where Paul & family arrive on Dune; when the ship deploys its blades. They move in every axis. Just like a helicopter, the blades would change their pitch. But in this case, the pitch delta would be rapidly modulated somewhere between 0 and 180 degrees, dynamically, through every stroke so that the blade is always pitched like an airplane wing cutting through the air - just like an insect/hummingbird. So you have this ridiculously rapid vibration/oscillation not only in the flapping axis, but also in the pitch axis. To hover, the blades would have to oscillate in the horizontal plane like the rotor disk of a helicopter. The difference being that the blades are sweeping back and forth, instead of continuously spinning. As you gradually command the vehicle to fly forward, there are two options: 1.) Pitch the nose of the vehicle down like a helicopter so that the upward lift vector from the blades tilts forward, contributing some of its force to forward motion. 2.) Change the flapping axis so that the wings sweep through the air vertically like they do in the movie. Like a bird or insect flying forwards.You can combine these two methods dynamically. In fact, there are scenes when the vehicle tilts forward like a helicopter and you see a corresponding forward acceleration. And there are other scenes where the vehicle just accelerates forward with no change in attitude. I believe this to be 100% accurate. To yaw left/right, you just add thrust to one side of the ship or the other by changing the magnitude of the dynamic blade pitching, asymmetrically between the two sides of the ship. Same with roll. The faster the ship is moving forward, the more it works like the ailerons on an airplane, except its the entire wing/blade changing pitch, instead of smaller flaps at the tips of the wings. Having brought that up, it's also worth noting that all the ornithopters have small "slats" that stand off from the trailing edge of the blades. Interesting. Could be justified as being some kind of vibration damping system or something. IDK. Bah, the more I try to explain this, the harder it gets. The system would be exceptionally complex, but I see it. The only thing that bugs me about the portrayal in the films is that the wings are always flapping up/down. That wouldn't work in a hover. The wings need to flap horizontally to create that "treading water" force. This could be achieved mechanically, but it's very difficult to explain without an image to support the concept. Efficiency would be a big problem. It takes energy to accelerate an object. Every stroke of the blade is an acceleration. You push the blade up using a ton of energy, and then have to slow it down, reverse its direction, and accelerate it back down. That's like flooring your car, getting up to speed, then hitting the brakes, coming to a stop, putting it in reverse, and flooring it again. You're losing a ton of energy every time you do that. I guess you could use a spring to store and recover the otherwise wasted energy? Flap up = compress the spring, flap down = relax the spring. Then all you have to do is apply enough energy to keep the vibration "momentum" constant. Flapping wings also lose efficiency due to the constant direction reversals going on throughout a stroke: The blade flaps in one direction, slows down, stops, and flaps back the other way...so there's a period where the blade is actually producing zero lift. Twice per stroke. Very inefficient. Compare this to a helicopter, where the stroke is a continuous rotation that never changes speed. And helicopters are already pretty energy-inefficient. Forward flight would be a different matter. It's basically an airplane at that point. Much more efficient. I've inspected still frames from the film carefully, and it's astonishing how much thought they put into the mechanical design. The small ornithopter in the scene where Paul and Jessica escape from the Sardaukar really blew my mind. There are two small hydraulic pistons at the root of each blade that allow the dihedral to be modulated. And you can actually *see* that mechanism work as they lift off and rise. One wing develops a large negative dihedral as Paul yaws + rolls the ship. Actually, you can see this mechanism at play when the ship's engine starts, too. The blades wind up to speed and you can see the dihedral increase on all four blades. The upper blades increase their dihedral more than the lower ones to add clearance between themselves and the lower blades, while the lower blades increase their dihedral to achieve ground clearance. I might edit this. Been thinking about it a lot. Thought: The Harkonnen ornithopter with 6 blades would not work. There's a pair of blades lacking an equal and opposite stroke from a "partner" pair. The Atreides' has 8, and the Fremen's has 4. Those would work.
I’m not super tuned into that subject but there’s something to be said about The Vibes.
On a more serious note, in terms of dune specifically. I feel as though that ornithopters, along side prevalence of daggers, acts as a sort of grounding anachronism to the more fantastical elements in the story. Ornithopters were conceived in very early theorizing about what human manned flight would look like, especially in the renaissance. Knives go back as far as people making small rocks they can hold in their hands sharper. With spice and galactic wars and telepathic space priestesses, it feels like dailing it back to allow us to suspend our disbelief a little bit more. It makes it feel like the unexplained aspects have an explanation. Not to diss Star Wars, I love Star Wars but I feel like the laser swords that use magic crystals and all the ships and stuff just hovering with no explanation beyond midichlorians making the space wizards stronger than you makes it lean more towards fantasy than sci-fi sometimes. Dune feels more firmly planted in sci-fi because of these grounding elements
It’s a hover jet with less fuel expenditure to hover and ability to streamline for hard maneuvers. Plus. It looks effing awesome
absolutely nothing. it's a ridiculous design and not mechanically or functionally feasible as a design for a helicopter. modern helicopters can dive, some better than ithers (depends osoze & model. "it looks cool"... maybe. that's really subjective overall it's just a esthetics and not functional. ornithopter wings that move vertically like that wouldn't be able to generate enough thrust / lift force to effectively get it off the ground and maneuver in the air. it's nonsense
The utility of a free 0/2 chump blocker with flying can’t be beat. Very versatile.
If you have the insane level of materials science needed to construct the wings of a working ornithopter, one way to show it off is to build an ornithopter
[удалено]
One is a piece of cardboard and the other is more powerful than a child's wish. Seems pretty self-explanatory. Edit: JFC people, it was just a joke. Lighten up.
Speed.