The Dune Thopter, or how to make your flight crew go deaf in less time than it took to read this

[@RamosLuis2550]

if you didn't read the disclaimer at 14:40, or the other times it is posted, it is worth the read

[@cahdoge]

For receference on how this might actually sound, probably similar to the XF-84H.

[@chrisreilly1290]

Thank you lol so glad I read that because of you

[@Skinflaps_Meatslapper]

@@cahdoge Some of the older aircraft out there using radials, and some of the newer race aircraft, are all reaching supersonic tip speeds. They don't necessarily want to be there, it's only out of a lack of options that they are. It's loud as hell too, if you've ever heard a T-6 Texan or a radial powered cropduster flying around, or if you've been to the Reno Air Races, you can hear the shockwaves from the prop right as they're perpendicular to you which is a much different sound compared to the exhaust that's quiet and mellow sounding. The sound penetrates ear plugs and ear muffs, probably because it's conducting that sound through your skull and into your eardrums. A T-6 running an R-1340 with a two blade 12D40 prop will only reach .97 Mach tip speed on a static ground run, this is the transonic region where some shockwaves are created locally on the thickest part of the airfoil, and they are technically still shockwaves, but it's not a full-fledged sonic boom yet. A little thinking on the subject and one would naturally assume that if the T-6 is flying, then the prop will be going faster through the air as well, and one would be absolutely correct. At cruise speed the T-6 prop is at 1.06 Mach if the prop is at max RPM, and doing the math backward you find that the outer 6" of the prop is supersonic. So if you'd like to find out a close approximation to what the thunderscreech sounded like, just go to an airshow that features T-6 aerobatics in some capacity (I'd say go to the Reno Air Races but they're gone for good). The XF-84 was calculated to be 12" of the prop as supersonic during static runs and 18" when in flight. It's a larger sonic boom than a T-6 prop, and there's three blades instead of two, so the Hz goes from the 66Hz drone of a T-6 to 105Hz for the XF84, 1.06 Mach compared to 1.16 Mach. It's a bit louder (but not much, given that sonic boom intensity doesn't change all that much between these two examples), but the real reason why the XF-84 was such a horrid little creature was because the prop was ALWAYS at that speed, ALWAYS going supersonic, from startup to shutdown. With the T-6, you're only experiencing that when it's taking off or from a distance when it's flying at max RPM (rare to do that), or those occasional times when it needs a ground run for maintenance. Then factor in the higher Hz of the XF-84 with its three bladed prop, so instead of a bass register frequency, it's getting up into voice register which our ears are more in tune with. Finally, comparing it to the flappy flappy copter, instead of 105Hz, you're at 166Hz for each wingtip, if they're all slightly out of phase, which would make sense, you could be getting the effect of 332Hz on each side, or 664Hz if you're above or below it. Not to mention that there would be WAY more of the wing going supersonic than the prop tip of the T-6 or the XF-84, it would be a lot larger, and the tips would be going three times as fast. Shockwave pressure increases with two primary values, speed of the object and size of the object, and those wings certainly qualify many times over for that. So to say these flappy flappy copters would be like the XF-84 would be a grave understatement, on the other hand it's also the closest thing we humans have made to approximate it.

[@StarGateSG7]

RC (Remote Control) aircraft enthusiasts are ALREADY building and flying these Dragonfly-like "Choppers" as shown in Dune and they are ACCURATE in detail to the movies! The wing control software to make these work is what has been the largest issue but we are very close to solving the issue using BOTH Source Code Procedural Modelling (i.e. the method I am using to mimic the wing movements of bees and dragonflies which uses a rule-based expert system to control wing movements!) and A.I. Neural Net modelling which "Watches" endless footage of closeup movements of insect wings to LEARN HOW to flap and move in sync so as to offer all-attitude flight (i.e. 3D-XYZ movement!). On an ENGINEERING BASIS, I have talked about using reinforced hollow stringers-based 7075 Aluminum Alloy and Titanium Alloy wing structures and geared lever systems which are STRONG ENOUGH to handle the constant vibration and up-down movement of the "Dune Copters" within REAL-WORLD FULL-SIZE applications! We have also figured out a way to DAMPEN the vibrations by ISOLATING the entire wing and geared lever components from the rest of the hull using a floating piston-system that is very similar to Active Suspension Systems in off-road vehicles (i.e. Fox Shocks 3.1). The wings move as needed but all vibrations and other movements are absorbed by pistons that push/pull on a realtime basis to offer SMOOTH flight to the passengers! Active noise cancellation that sends out acoustic waves of the same timbre, frequencies and amplitudes of the flying Dune Copter wings but resamples and processes them to be 180 degrees out-of-phase will reduce acoustic signatures by at least 65% to make them effectively "Whisper Quiet"! To put it mildly, we know we CAN BUILD and actually FLY these Dune Copters at full-scale for real and we can do it within MONTHS! V

[@arthurdotson9579]

@@Skinflaps_Meatslapper your name....can you slap a chicken so hard that you can cook it???

[@isekaiexpress9450]

I'M A CERTIFIED ORNITHOPTER PILOT WITH HUNDREDS OF FLIGHT HOURS AND I ABSOLUTELY HAVE NO PROBLEMS WITH MY HEARING WHATSOEVER.

[@GhostBear3067]

WHAT?!!!

[@isekaiexpress9450]

@@GhostBear3067WHAT?!!!

[@alonespirit9923]

YOU PAID FOR AN ORTHOGRAPHIC PLOT WITH HUNDREDS OF FIVERS? WHY SO MUCH?

[@isekaiexpress9450]

@@alonespirit9923I LAID A ENTHNOGRAPHIC BROAD?!!! WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT?!!!

[@alonespirit9923]

@@isekaiexpress9450 I DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD A RAPIDOGRAPHIC PEN HOARD.

[@KristoffDoe]

Atredis engineer: "Sire, I am proud to report that after centuries we have perfected making our spaceships, ornithopters, and all the equipment virtually impervious to salt water, thus making us truly unstoppable sea power of Caladan! ... I'm sorry, sire, my hearing is not that great. Where did you say we're moving now?..."

[@SacredCowShipyards]

"Well... [deleted]."

[@SterileNeutrino]

But the Ornis are a feature of Arrakis, recently vacated by House Harkonnen. They are not from Caladan at all.

[@KristoffDoe]

@@SterileNeutrino Thufir Hawat says this about ornithopters on Dune: "These 'thopters are FAIRLY CONVENTIONAL. (...) Major modifications give them extended range. Extra care has been used in sealing essential areas against sand and dust." - this to me indicate that ornithopters are used on other worlds as well, possibly including Caladan. The fact there's no mention of ornithopter in Dune chapters taking place on Caladan doesn't mean they are NOT used there and ONLY used on Dune. Because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (Dune glossary - "terminology of the imperium" - does not say they are unique to Dune either.)

[@egoalter1276]

Thopters are the general use flying vehicle. They are not particular to arrakis.

[@792slayer]

I love how they took the least efficient way to fly, with the most moving parts and stress points, and then put it in an extremely hostile environment full of airborne grit. What could possibly go wrong?

[@xxxlonewolf49]

The Spice powers/protects?

[@LastGoatKnight]

To be honest, imitating birds or bats would be actually more efficient. But yeah, these Thopters are very bad, because they flap fast while the efficient way is pitch up and up then pitch down and down in an imaginary horizontal 8 shape. Those on the Thopters are just flap up and down, which makes 0 lift. I know I'm overthinking it but this and a lot of channel does pretty much the same

[@Neuttah]

The flap flap keeps the gritty out.

[@80krauser]

Spice is a hell of a drug - Aerospace Engineers in Dune

[@neoroland952]

​@LastGoatKnight the blades also rotate to change pitch as they flap iirc from the book. They are basically mechanical dragonflies

[@renegadeleader1]

I'm a little disappointed the XF-84H Thunderscreech didn't get a mention. It's propeller constantly broke the sound barrier creating a continuous sonic boom that would be powerful enough to knock the ground crew on their ass and the noise just causing deafness, but triggering nausea, headaches, and seizures if you were too close.

[@Andrew-se9be]

Came here to comment exactly this. That plane was just absolutely insane, an interesting workaround to the limits of jet engines of the time, but no less insane

[@blackc1479]

Was gonna say the same. pity there's not really any good recordings of one floating around.

[@bufonidae5173]

I was just about to mention that boy

[@brettclark8020]

​@@blackc1479from the descriptions, normal recording equipment could not possibly capture or reproduce such a sound

[@kyriss12]

If i remember right that was just a prototype that never entered production. One of the test pilots went deaf, and the other told the project director "you're not big enough, and there's not enough of you to get me back in that plane."

[@dragonbait1]

The thing that makes sense to me to use Ornithopters is that the flapping could be based not on bearing moving parts but on elastic single piece parts. Like a muscle. That can't be does with rotors but imagine a polymer that can contract and expand like a muscle but maintains enough stiffness to achieve lift. They may not show that in the models used in the movies, but for me it solves the "Why 'Thopters" question.

[@aureaphilos]

When I read the book, back in the mid 70s, I imagined the Ornithopters as dragonfly-like constructions. The images that I see in the promotional materials for this latest movie version looks like Katydid with Dragonfly wings. Katydids would provide much more internal capacity than dragonflies would.

[@Lectrikfro]

That's sounds like how the heart mollusk worked without the biology. And if I remember they use plasteel for much of their machinery which probably has better stress resistance. I also want to say we should probably get the flap rate from the tone they produce in the film

[@nos9784]

Fun fact: afaik, Eurocopter rotors change blade pitch by deforming a fibreglass rod/ torsion spring inside the (hollow?) blade.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

@@nos9784 Replacing bearing wear with material fatigue? Interesting choice.

[@boobah5643]

"Why 'thopters?" is a question answered because they are theoretically more efficient than a helicopter. That is, you can lift more with a smaller engine. _If_ you can engineer both a helicopter and an ornithopter to their respective theoretical limits. It's not even particularly close. It's just that achieving those limits, or even approaching them, especially with the ornithopter, is tricky.

[@seawurm]

The DUNE universe's series were capable of safe faster than light travel. But it relied on A.I. which was banned after the crusade against the machines.

[@sigstackfault]

Butlerian Jihad.

[@GrantWaller.-hf6jn]

Docmater the reason for the seat belt testing was US Air Forse pilots were getting seriously injured or dying in car crashes driving with no seat belts in sports cars driving as speed demons they are.

[@KillahMate]

Safe _-ish,_ I believe? The number of collisions was significantly higher with AI navigation - I guess it was just a tolerable amount for an interstellar empire. With Guild navigators it became an actually quite safe mode of travel.

[@jaythekid4728]

@@KillahMateno it was perfectly safe and reliable. Without AI 1 in 9 ships would not make it to their destination

[@robertbensch7748]

@@jaythekid4728I thought without AI or Navigators, so conventional computation it was 10% failure to arrive in one piece. With navigators and AI it was 100%, but if I remember correctly, the range was drastically reduced when using navigators instead of AI. As Arrakis was further out from the core worlds didn´t they need a couple of jumps to arrive as well? After all the high liners work like buses instead of taxis: you board one and hop off at your destination. In the old movie house atreides didn´t even book a whole liner for themselves to move their entire house planet to planet.

[@trekkieraccoon3343]

Putting googly eyes on the sandworms made my day

[@TheRewasder97]

Reminded me of the eyes mod for darkest dungeon xD

[@Minotaur-ey2lg]

Reminds me of the Elmo Dune meme.

[@richardhockey8442]

'Oi! shut that noisy shield off! I'm trying to sleep here!'

[@smiddlehurst1]

I never thought of this before but how surprised do you think the first person to use a shield in the desert was? I mean I’m sure it was very *briefly* surprised but the shift from ‘confident in your near immortality’ to ‘I regret my life choices’ had to be a pretty epic swing….

[@EGRJ]

And what about the person who they were fighting? "...Huh."

[@VladMcCain]

Don't forget that lasers and shields cause nuclear explosions, on both the gun and shield generation...

[@xzardas541]

@@VladMcCain it's the shield that explodes, at least in books.

[@ericwilner1403]

@@xzardas541 In the book, both shield and gun exploded. The mechanism of this was not explained, but somehow no one had come up with a workaround, nor exploited the effect for new and exciting offensive weaponry.

[@Daolnwood]

​@ericwilner1403 The weaponization of the Holtzman Effect - whether accidental or deliberate - was classified in the same category as the use of atomic weaponry, and entirely banned under interstellar edict.

[@atigerclaw]

See, the joke's on us. The people of 'The Duniverse' discovered a secret material that allows them to build machines that are lubricated by sand. It's genius really. The very concept warps everything we know about material science the same way the Highliners warp physics itself.

[@Lectrikfro]

The Pla in Plasteel is short for "PLeAse rub sand all over me"

[@johannesbowers7467]

Dry lubricants are a thing. Basically pouring micro ball bearings between slideable surfaces....

[@ferdievanschalkwyk1669]

So you are saying dirty molten glass is the lubricant?

[@mk6315]

@@ferdievanschalkwyk1669 raw glass*

[@spdcrzy]

@@ferdievanschalkwyk1669 that would actually be a really clever secondary lubrication mechanism. Ingest sand, superheat it AND supercool it so it forms perfect glass spheres, and after it lubricates, it gets expelled as waste. It's perfect.

[@RaderizDorret]

Ok. I'd rather be a wrench jockey being assigned to work on the drive system on a Juggernaut than being a maintenance tech on Arrakis.

[@travisbishop782]

Here's hoping the Empire actually sends you parts soon.

[@lordfrostwind3151]

As bad as thopters are, I'll take that over maintenance on the harvester carriers. Hauling those bad boys around has gotta be absolute Hell.

[@ToggerstheFroggers]

Barring all the issues of the most mechanically complex flight method in the worst possible environment for complex mechanics, the other issue of using aircraft that rely on rapidly flapping wings on a world with giant predatory worms that hunt *rhythmic vibrations* is another major oversight in terms of OSHA safety compliance. Though ‘Thopters strike me as a compromise between fixed wing aircraft and rotorcraft in having worse performance than either and the drawbacks of both… but DAMN do they look frickin’ sweet!

[@thetiredbiker3652]

Aircraft that operates entirely on “rule of cool” 😂

[@matthiuskoenig3378]

Actually ornihthoper research suggests major advantages over both. Recent ornithopter drone designs are more energy efficient, faster, more manuererable and quieter than comparable rotar designs (both fixed wing and 'copter)

[@ToggerstheFroggers]

@@matthiuskoenig3378 I would love to be proven wrong, but I believe that scaling such a device to the size and capability of that shown in the film may be out of the realm of feasibility/practicality. Moving the mass of even one propeller alone at hundreds or thousands of times per minute would take insane power and materiel strength, let alone 4 or 8 of them.

[@solofilmproduction]

At drone level sure, unique qualities but we won't be taking Ornies to work...@@matthiuskoenig3378

[@TheCaptNoname]

Landstad M1899 Automatic Revolver moment, am I right?

[@danyael777]

Fun little thing: I just watched Tomographic play MS Flight Sim with the new free Dune upgrade. It lets you fly a few missions in an Ornithopter on a Dune map and it's quite well done. First thing the man complained about was how loud the thing is in external view. XD

[@Volsung24]

They WHAT?! Thanks I am going to have to check this out.

[@danyael777]

@@Volsung24 Yeah, they did it quite well also the aerodynamics etc. But the last mission is knit a little too tight.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

At least MS got that right.

[@itzdono]

There's a recently discovered vortex effect with the dragonfly wing design. It was a Japanese scientist back in 2014, I believe, so it's less than a decade old. Very cutting edge stuff in aviation. They've already made flying prototypes, with plans to scale it up. You can see actual mechanical examples of this design, in flight, in real life. The Russians made one a few years ago a few meters long with 8 wings, I think. You get a much better horizontal reaction time & response than a helicopter, in all directions, without losing stability, & more control with the wing causes less noise, and noise uses energy that can be put towards work & lift. Quieter also means it is a design better suited for urban use & you don't need a secondary system for stabilization. It's one of the most efficient designs for flight & could replace the helicopter & quad drone design because of it's energy efficiency, maneuverability, & quieter noise output. I assumed that's why Denis included it, since it's an up & coming technology & makes more sense than any other ornithopter design, as described in the book. I was really excited to see it in the first Dune, since I'd just seen a wind tunnel video that showed the physics of the down stroke of the front wing making the back wings do less work, moving through the lower pressure caused by the previous wing beat. That's also why they're quieter. They use smoke to visualize the vortex effect, previously unknown, even though, the ornithopter design was one of the first experimented on. Computers & composite materials are now bringing those outdated designs to life. This vortex would also drive away (some) sand like the effects from a helicopter, even on the front wing. Aviation design takes time. Ornithopters are still a long way off in our aviation future but they are coming & they're also safer. Even with engine failure, unlike helis or quads, you still get biplane wing lift & can use it to glide for emergency landings, which they also highlighted in the film. We don't know the theoretical mass limit yet, but planet Arrakis is also supposed to have less gravity. Recent research points towards successful scalability, but sonic booms does not appear to be one of the problems so far. On the contrary, the noise reduction does scale (with wing control, to be specific, so the wing can slice through the air in the direction of the created vortices). Silly though they may look, ornithopters are quite feasible, & an engineering marvel that is an existing non sci-fi technology. It's an elegant design borrowed from nature with millions of years of evolution to back up it's efficacy. Whether we can scale them up to this size is still theoretical, but the maths, so far, point toward a plausible future in aviation, though, realistically, still decades away even with continued successful research. This is also the kind of tech that disappears into the skunk works long before it ever reaches the civilian market, so don't be surprised if you don't see them anytime soon.

[@boobah5643]

"...realistically, still *decades away* even with continued successful research." does not square with "...an engineering marvel that is an existing *non sci-fi* technology." (bold added) You only get one or the other, not both.

[@ornerylurker8296]

By that logic, FTL is a real technology. Yes, you can absolutely have a field of science be both, there is a grey area things have to pass through to come into existence called “making it work” that encompasses literally every moment of an idea’s existence in between the time it is first conceived of to the point it is totally perfected in every way.

[@AutomaticJack]

Link?

[@itzdono]

@@ornerylurker8296We do not have any scale models demonstrating that FTL works. FTL is still very much theoretical with no mechanical examples of it even being possible, which, due to the masses involved, probably won't. There's also the significant hurdle of information not being able to be sent faster than light since it would cause time paradoxes. You can't compare a purely theoretical science with one that has ongoing actual physical experiments demonstrating the success of the theory. We have working models to support the technology while FTL does not. That's the difference.

[@ornerylurker8296]

@@itzdono Got lost in the weeds and missed the forest for the trees, there.

[@plasticfuzzball9962]

when i first saw these things in the trailers i watched the wings make afterimages in between afterimages and thought "wow, everyone in like a 50 foot radius of those things must feel like their skeleton is trying to escape"

[@WickedScott]

Driving military vehicles is like a marriage, Even after they're gone or have been given to the Taliban, you have a ring to remember them by. My Bradley A3 BFist must have really loved me, I got a really big ring. Sitting in the driver's hole right next to 600hp of engine grinding for 24 hours straight really was a dream. Even with ear pro

[@camerongunn7906]

I'll feel your brother! I would like to thank my Bradley for my 50% hearing loss.

[@nibs7252]

Remember, military hardware is built with the sole and express purpose of causing injury and death. However, unfortunately for its users, it doesn't particularly care who or what it harms, only that it causes as much harm as possible.

[@ryansmith5133]

Abrams got my ass with that ring too but ya know some how it’s not service related

[@nibs7252]

@@ryansmith5133 What crew position were you?

[@seanheath4492]

@@nibs7252The Abrams cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows? :P

[@basher20]

Based on experience with the XF-84 “Thundershriek”, a modified F-84 with a turbine-driven, supersonic propeller (long story; it made sense to somebody at the time), being deafened would be a minor medical issue to the crew, as that much acoustic energy would reduce their internal organs to not so chunky salsa in a matter of seconds.

[@caav56]

Didn't the sonic booms from prop also pulverize the concrete runway below the plane as well?

[@arrgylerawrgyle3784]

It was bad, mmmmkayy.

[@Leonard-nb7jk]

Acoustic engineers of the 1950s

[@ptonpc]

Some ground crew had epileptic fits if I recall.

[@atomicskull6405]

What's old is new again, the propfan is basically a more advanced version of what the F-84 attempted, to drive a propeller directly off a turbojet's turboshaft with no gear reduction. Basically it's a high bypass turbofan engine with the bypass fan on the outside. See: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f3XIq2uFp7GEe68 for a working example. They solved the noise problem by using many more deeply curved counter rotating blades. Apparently this is more fuel efficient than a standard high bypass turbofan.

[@Penultimeat]

I always thought the best part about helicopters is how their blades are above my head and not vibrating rapidly at people-height.

[@kanaric]

So like a propeller aircraft lmao

[@tonygreenfield7820]

Compared to the Atreides Thopter in both the Lynch movie and the SciFi Channel miniseries, the Thopters in the new movies were at least visually an attempt to show a flappy wing aircraft. Oddly, the Harkonen thopter in the Dune movie by Lynch looked a lot like a dragonfly except for its wings. The first movie Atrides thopter looked like a flying brick with a couple of fans (the classic folding ladies fan, not a rotary fan) on either side as wings. In the miniseries the wings of the thopter had built in rotary fans. It looked like a less practical Shield Quinjet.... So kudos to the new movies for at least trying.

[@ferrusmanus184]

Ornithopters. Because the XF-84 Thunderscreech just wasn't loud enough.

[@Reddotzebra]

Me looking at that Chinook: "Ok, so why does it look so... Oh wait, that's burning metal, isn't it?"

[@lancepharker]

I believe it is actually static electricity generated by the sand rubbing on the rotors. The rotors are generally some sort of composite, and the sand is a dielectric so it's just a big static generator, that is slowly being eaten away by the sand.

[@Reddotzebra]

​@@lancepharker Ah, so it's actually plasma.

[@danyael777]

@@Reddotzebraexactly. it can also be seen at night with NV goggles. Without the sand.

[@Tuberuser187]

@@lancepharker It's a variation of St Elmos fire essentially, fixed wing aircraft can experience it around the cockpit and leading edges in storm driven sand or volcanic ash or in dry sections of thunder clouds.

[@joshuacallaway5984]

Former Chinook Mechanic and crew chief here. What you are seeing in that pic is the sand hitting the leading edge of the rotor blades. The last few feet are made of nickel and is called the "Erosion cap" and the rest is just called th spar cap and is made of titanium. The sand hitting the blades is actually going faster than a grinding wheel...by a lot. Average 8" grinding wheel @ 3600rpm is about 85 mph. The tip speed on a chinook rotor is about 450 mph, and is about 95 mph at 6 ft from the rotor hub. So what you are seeing is basically the blades being worn/sanded down. That isn't to say that static discharge from the blades isn't a thing...it totally is, but is very different looking. You will only see it on a helicopter (usually) if it is airborn. When on the ground it is grounded, and doesn't build a charge. Also, whenever I've seen it, it is always a pale blue or pink (just like regular static discharge), and on chinooks, you will see it only at the rotor blade tips. Other helicopters have static disipators that look like little cables hanging off the lagging edge of the blade to give the static a place to discharge that isn't the tip cap. Can only guess that it is to prevent arcing from the blade to the tip cap but never asked the engineers.

[@SnakeWasRight]

"If birds are even real..." This guy knows.

[@Penultimeat]

3:15 I thought that AI and robots could actually calculate how to fold space just as effectively and accurately as any guild navigator, but AI being completely outlawed and shunned has forced everyone to rely on spice- unnecessarily.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

There was the period between those two solutions, though.

[@egoalter1276]

Not nearly as well. There was a part of the butleeian jihad where the human ships used compuiters to calculate routs, and they had a 10% faliour rate per jump. Guild navigators as far as we know, never fail a fold.

[@ShuRugal]

Using an oscilloscope on the movie sound, a dune 'thopter in cruise flight makes sounds around 200-300 hz, with the dominant component being at about 210 hz (at least as comes out of my speakers). That's not unreasonable, as most full-scale helicopters here on Earth target 200-300 RPM main rotor speed. Assuming the articulation pattern on the 'thopter is adequate to ensure that the wings are using their supplied energy at least as efficiently as a modern helicopter, that would definitely allow the thing to fly.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Elsewhere in comments here someone notes it comes out as 110hz, but all of this may be dependent upon recording and broadcast equipment, so it's hard to pin down.

[@ShuRugal]

@@SacredCowShipyards yeah, I literally just used an oscope app on my phone to measure the sound out of my PC speakers. Not exactly high quality testing.

[@barrybend7189]

Captain tenitus reporting for duty. Also there's a video about a French aviator's attempt at an Ornithopter.

[@richardhockey8442]

'pardon? All I can hear is 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'

[@cybersmith_videos]

I'm guessing thicker eardrums came about during the centuries of human evolution that also allowed us to think harder than computers.

[@jus53]

it's the human pet guy!

[@xyreniaofcthrayn1195]

Ornithoptors on arrakis spend 90% of their time in maintenance...

[@Muljinn]

If they’re lucky…

[@xyreniaofcthrayn1195]

@@Muljinn 100% of the ones that make it there and back again an arrakis journey.

[@boobah5643]

So, you're saying it compares favourably to the (insert favorite hangar queen here. I'mma go with) F-14.

[@lvcifer-cloverfield]

I mean it's only feasible to use 3 of them every few cycles for cross-desert air strikes

[@richardhockey8442]

'get your walking boots on lads, of the 100 ornithopters we landed with, only three are still working, and I wouldn't fly any of those for any amount of spice..'

[@Voltaic_Fire]

I imagine, with no technical knowledge whatsoever, that those wings would be made of or with some futuristic memory alloy kept under constant heat or electrical charge, it is the only way I can think of to mitigate the instantaneous deformation.

[@zefellowbud5970]

Super nitinol lol

[@Actvontact]

The ornithopter goes *THUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHU*

[@ToggerstheFroggers]

I had to let you know that the translation button under your comment makes the thuthut into “motorcyclotic motorcycles”, and that’s inordinately funny to me

[@kavemanthewoodbutcher]

​@Toggers99 I'm so glad I'm not thr only one to have seen that lolz

[@firehawk5962]

​​@@ToggerstheFroggersfor me it translates THUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHUTHU into THUTHUTHTUTHTUTHTUTHTU THTUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUT HUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHU TUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTU THUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTH UTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUT UTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUT HUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHU TUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTU THUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTH UTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUT UTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUT HUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHUTUTHU TUTHUTUTHUTUTHUT).

[@tylerreed610]

​@@firehawk5962 the translation of yours makes it even longer lmao

[@axelhopfinger533]

And the sandworms go BWOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[@maddlarkin]

I always thought in the Dune universe, depending on how repeatable and reliable thr rffect is, you could win an awful lot of wars with an illiterate conscript and a lasrifle, it's a bit harsh on the conscript but the K-D ratio would be outstanding

[@malusignatius]

The reason the houses don't try it is the same reason why House Atomics are a big deal: The Great Convention. Even an accidental atomic detonation can get your house declared the enemy of every other house and pummeled into oblivion.

[@Lectrikfro]

The effect is reliable, it happens every time a las beam interacts with a shield. In one of the later books a character uses the interaction to create mines. The feedback from the interaction does destroy both the lasgun and the shield though so you wouldn't want the guy in the middle of your troops going off taking a bunch of your men with him. I would suggest some remote snipers with a death wish might be a better suited for doing this on purpose

[@malusignatius]

@@Lectrikfro Regardless, if you did it, you would have the entire empire fall on you like a sack of hammers. The barrier isn't technological or strategic, it's political.

[@nos9784]

​@@malusignatiushow does that stop houses from doing it with secret agents or false flag operators? Are shields or lasguns controlled tech, like with non- proliferation? As i understand it, the interaction basicly implies any wannabe terrorist has nuke- level power.

[@malusignatius]

@@nos9784 Yes, sort-of. Basically, to have enough revenue to either tech, you need to be a noble. And although that might not stop secret agents and such, the other factor with the Duneverse is how deeply embedded the Bene Gessarit and the Spacer's Guild are within the power structure of the Empire. It would be hard to do a false-flag like that without them knowing, and both organisations are deeply invested in maintaining the peace. Sure, there are specific circumstances where it might be condoned by one or even both, but that's unlikely. And getting away with it without either or both of the organisation's support would be practically impossible, most of the time. Paul only managed it because he held the Spice to ransom (neutering the Spacer's Guild) and because he had the mental abilities, training and knowledge to beat the Bene Gessarit at their own game.

[@ShuRugal]

I can think of one advantage to a flappy-flappy vehicle over a whirly-spinny one in a sandy atmosphere: You can hermetically seal a flapping joint with a rubber boot such that the dust never comes into contact with a sliding joint. You can't do that with spinning joints. Those dust boots would requires a shitload of maintenance on their own, but better to change dust boots every day than shaft bearings every week.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

I would note that drive axle boots and CV boots are very much a thing on your planet already. To extend the concept, though, the rotor-control mechanisms would be harder to boot than a single universal joint at the craft's fuselage.

[@ShuRugal]

@@SacredCowShipyards oh definitely. I was merely observing that it's a more solvable problem than a shaft or bearing seal.

[@Feargal011]

The novel mentions the difficulties ground crews faced adapting Caladan 'thopters to the conditions on Arrakis. That might be one of the adaptations.

[@jmiheve]

And all of this doesn't even /touch/ on the thermal effects of moving the wings that fast through an atmosphere. Just for comparison, the Lockheed SR-71 would cruise at mach 3.2, and the windscreen would reach peak temperatures of around 600° F and still be well over 500° F after landing. Radiant heat would do a good job of cooking the ground crews, and managing that heat would add so many more layers of complexity.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

So I did the math on the thermal exchange (or, well, one of the minions did), and it didn't seem /that/ catastrophic, but the full details were highly dependent upon specific atmospheric variables, material composition of the blades, and specific geometries.

[@salopiangrowler]

The temperatures on Arrakas are unbearably hot during the day. Something like 80-120c during the day. So yes, that Added to the equations. Thopters got Toasty.

[@richardhockey8442]

If I recall the upper speed limit for the F-16 is the speed at which the cockpit canopy starts to melt

[@BlackEpyon]

I don't know who put the googlies on the sand worms, but they're a frickin' genius 🤣

[@weirdkitty07]

Might have a silly in Duneiverse answer to sand getting everywhere, the shields. Assume they have turned them on when in flight. Then they could have one for the pilot and crew so they don't go deaf. And if they are grown somehow, the copters are basically bio bug birds. They could procreate. It would be both frightening and hilarious and someone on the webs probably already drew that.

[@Lectrikfro]

I am now fighting the urge to search or ornithopter rule 34... Thanks

[@richardhockey8442]

when the maintenance crew has to report that half their fleet are currently 'knocked up' and out of action

[@geodkyt]

Using thr Holzmann effect and laser/shield interactions to your best effect: Laser emiting warheads on small, highly manueverable missiles maximized for speed, range, and manueverability. The laser can even fire "off bore" with a rastering head that basically projects a solid cone of laser energy in front of it. Remember, a hand laser can trigger the BOOM effect, so you clearly don't have a very high threshold of minimum energy to meet. So, anything as powerful as a small, comcealable pistol is clearly enough.

[@jamesoldham9995]

I had a similar idea with lasers mounted on drones.

[@EGRJ]

*Honor Harrington fans:* Hol' up.

[@caav56]

Okay, that's an interesting idea. I can imagine a Hunter-Killer, optimized for shieldbusting like this

[@lordfrostwind3151]

If I remember right it's less the power of the laser and more the power of shield being hit. Where it gets crazy are the planetary scale shields from back during the Brian Herbert books in the Butlerian Jihad, that would be spicy.

[@torg2126]

​​@@lordfrostwind3151 they didn't use Holtzman Effect planetary shields, they uses some kind of EMP field as a shield. The Machines sent in Cymechs, as cyborgs don't get whipped like AIs do.

[@ptonpc]

"Hearing Loss? Never heard of her!"

[@HBHaga]

Legion of Substitute Heroes. *sagenod*

[@geodkyt]

Ornithopters make helicopters look like rowboat simple, comparively speaking. Of course, once you're a thousand feet in the air (absent a sandstorm), you can ignore sand, by and large (orher thsn whatever sand you've dragged up to altitude with you).

[@thelukesternater]

Still dust high up ;)

[@Krahazik]

Maybe the Dune universe employs some sonic dampening system to protect everyone around the craft and inside it from the noise?

[@kellingc]

This is one of the most Douglas Adams style non-Douglas Adams essays. I love your presentation.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

I appreciate that!

[@Voltaic_Fire]

You're right, dune worms should have had googly eyes.

[@stephenbond1990]

Fun Fact: An actual dragonfly-type ornithopter was actually built by the French government before WWII and made it to full scale wind tunnel testing before the countdown to war became too dire and surprisingly survived the war and apparently still exists. A video on it is linked here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hpuYo2yhnNOcbZo

[@ExtrovertedIntrovert123]

Im gonna keep doing this until it actually happens, UNSC Infinity.

[@Beanie28]

Flying bricks built around a gun wasn’t good enough…. Let’s make it biiiiiiiig and add more gun

[@jeehoonlee5150]

Others have pointed out (I didn't notice until a second watch as it goes by very fast): a missile takes out the shield generator on Duncan's thopter. The attackers must have noticed his shield was down. I think the SFX could have been made clearer by making the shields more obvious instead of the blurry effect so the audience can clearly see that it was no longer working after being damaged.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Yeah, given the shields' default setting is "nearly transparent", I certainly wouldn't want to check to see if the shields are still up by poking it with a laser.

[@daviddesrosiers1946]

Certainly, the Ixians would have cooked up a solution to the whole crew going deaf problem.

[@8888blizzard]

To Dockmaster: Thou shall not make a machine in the image of a human mind.

[@blackc1479]

Duck and cover lads, here comes the cubifier!

[@mjbull5156]

Are you presuming the image made in was human?

[@boobah5643]

@@mjbull5156Less 'presuming' and more 'remembering early installment weirdness.'

[@SacredCowShipyards]

They have to find me first.

[@Kilroy.6644]

The US Navy and Air Force experimented with a turboprop plane with a supersonic prop the XF-84H Thunderscreech. It was so loud that it made the ground crew physically ill (nausea and headaches) and could be heard from 25 miles away, so I imagine something similar would happen with the ornithopter

[@capslfern2555]

the video that got me back to this channel

[@mjbull5156]

I also wonder how such a complicated device would be able to be controlled without a fairly sophisticated computer. There is another problem with genetically engineered mollusks. Aside from needing to feed them, they also generally like to be moist, if not outright wet. Maintenance on Arrakis would be that much more complicated.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

The prohibition in Dune is /technically/ just about full-on AIs. They seem to make do with primitive electronics and possibly even things you might consider "computers".

[@zombieshoot4318]

@@SacredCowShipyardsThey have computers. All over the place. They just don't have AI or even better AGI. You're not landing the Emperors ship on Dune without computers.

[@HBHaga]

@@SacredCowShipyardsI mean, sure, Mentats are doing the heavy lifting on some of those tactical holo-display tables but there's still enough processing complexity to handle verbal commands ... either that or the banks of technicians were cleverly hidden.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Well, it turns out your Amazon grocery stores were doing exactly that, so...

[@XMarkxyz]

I honestly would assume a lower amount of flap per minute: keeping the analogy with humming birds as they get bigger their flapping frequency reduce but they still can fly very well mainly because the wing surface is bigger, so I'd put the ornithopter frequency at araund 3000 flaps per minute

[@SacredCowShipyards]

The problem is that the wing size for birds on your planet grows faster than their fuselages, while this is still fairly in-scale with a dragonfly.

[@spectreandromedus8661]

Thunderscreech, huh? Hold my spice beer

[@chengong388]

Rapid oscillation wings can’t scale for simple reasons of tip speed and square-cube law. But the idea of oscillation based propulsion is still interesting because it doesn’t require rotary motion and thus potentially less grinding, more immunity against sand. They should probably went for wings that are mostly like normal fixed wing, but it’s lined with small vibration elements as flaps, this way we avoid the tip speed issue, just say the wings can generate a continuous flow across its surface almost like a solid state fan.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

It's going to have to rotate somehow, otherwise the wings are just going to oscillate with no lift generated.

[@musicalaviator]

It does solve the problen of retreating blade stall (helicopters will stall one side of the rotor at high speeds) ... ok so it introduces hundreds of new problems but still..

[@widgren87]

I got image in my mind of a catastrohpic failure when those wings fracture at max speeds and turns the vehicle into a flying Claymore... And then my brain added a city, low flight and civvies... Great video as always ;-)

[@sin-text857]

And here I thought the XF-84H Thunderscreetch would be where this idiocy would end.

[@specialagentdustyponcho1065]

Regarding the sand and maintenance problem, oscillating wings can be sealed with woven or elastic baffles over the joints, while a rotary wing as on a helicopter can't be completely sealed around the rotor. Alternatively, the joints could be compliant mechanisms, which do not have any rolling or sliding surfaces at all. That said, you could solve this problem on a helicopter with a positive pressure system that constantly blows filtered air out through the axle. Regarding wingtip velocity, they don't necessarily need to be flapping at twice the rate of a hummingbird's wing. The ornithopters have a much longer wingspan relative to their body than a hummingbird does, as well as having 4-8 wings depending on model as opposed to 2 on a hummingbird, which altogether may give it enough wing area to generate sufficient lift and upforce for vertical takeoff without exceeding supersonic wingtip velocities.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

They definitely show that the joints connecting the wings to the fuselage have both sliding and rolling surfaces.

[@Beanie28]

So the golden age of technology, is the dune universe? Oh no

[@danyael777]

After the Cybernetic Revolt/ Butlerian Jihad. So actually pre-Age of Strife.

[@logansmall5148]

Clearly house Harkkonen employs men of iron based on the look of their troops.

[@RaderizDorret]

Unlikely. The Butlerian Jihad outlawed all AI which is why Mentats are a thing.

[@davethompson3326]

I, for one, welcome the Ixian tech renaissance

[@blackc1479]

Somebody cue big gold....

[@jlvfr]

Dockmaster, Duncan's ornithopter lost it's shields. Right after takeoff we see it taking a massive hit that pushes the craft side and down. That hit took out the shield, which is why the Harkonnen used a laser.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

It's unclear if the shields went down or simply stopped taking damage and thus went back to their normal transparent setting. I certainly wouldn't poke one with a lasgun to check.

[@jlvfr]

@@SacredCowShipyards yeah, I had to check too, but there are multiple comments around the net about it. But it's a pity they didn't make that scene clearer, tbh. Just another 5-10 secs of missiles hitting and the shield flickering out would have done the trick.

[@trolleyfan]

Arguably, the idea of an ornithopter goes back to myth of Icarus.

[@anon_y_mousse]

I still don't get the thing with the shields. I'm inclined to believe that he only added that because he wanted them to have another weakness, or possibly that he wanted to make it a plot point. Though, I haven't read the entire series yet to know if it ever gets used tactically.

[@ChristianMcAngus]

The Holtzmann shields were added as a means of slowing technological progress. Warfare (unfortunately) tends to drive technological progress. With the limitations imposed by shield warfare, and the general anti-computer dictates, warfare has remained the same for 10000 years.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

It was definitely artistic license to force hand-to-hand combat, and does end up being weaponized later on.

[@Tomyironmane]

So .220 Swift tops out closer to 4000 fps, and .17 Remington (NOT .17 HMR) sits at around 4100 fps .22-250 will do 3500 fps, though. BUT YEAH.... the minute you said average of 1600fps, the first thing I thought of was the XF-84 Thunderscreech. The Almighty Ear-banger. For reference, it was NOT healthy to be in, near, or under that thing when it was running or flying. It deafened and sickened ground crews, damaged ground equipment by flying overhead, and was slowly tearing apart the airframe when they turned it on. Few recordings of the sound it made exist because it tended to destroy microphones at any range under 30,000 feet. The first test pilot who flew the damn thing landed it and told the project engineer, "You aren't big enough and there aren't enough of you to get me in that thing again." But forget sonic boom... have you seen what metal does when it hits things at that speed...? At those speeds, the bullet is barely capable of not flying apart in air, and when you use .220 swift on a groundhog, the bullet disintegrates before it gets to the other side of the rodent. My dad managed to tag a wasp with a .22-250 and the damn thing left a little teardrop of lead tattoo on the target where striking the wasp had split the bullet. God help you if you have a bird strike. Edit: Shooting shields with laser guns DOES happen in the books. You just gotta have someone shooting who is perfectly willing to die, so long as it guarantees that they take you with them. These sorts of people are not in short supply on Arrakis.

[@HiopX]

Question for the book nerds: Since the shields can stop anything but knives, why does no one wear chainmail underneath? Or breastplate? Stopping a knife is rocket science, we literally figured it out in the middle ages

[@SacredCowShipyards]

It came up, but I don't remember why. Maybe something about the metal mucking with the field.

[@weirdkitty07]

Sand is absolutely going to eff up mechanical parts. Dune dragonfly copter movie says hold my beer.

[@M18Hellcat-17]

I knew it was a matter of time before this one came out. As soon as I saw those wings in a sandy environment I thought of you.

[@jasonmorello1374]

I am sure some others may mention, if a wing is vibrating at half those speeds, you get a fluid dynamics past the speed of sound means you don't get interaction in positive anymore. As found by craft passing the speed of sound, their control surfaces of all type just stop mattering. That is really a hard hand wave for me, and I love the story base. It has to be slower than sound IMO for that reason.

[@mysteriousstranger5873]

I could see an ornithopter having a very real advantage in that it might be able to translate omnidirectionally like some insects and hummingbirds.

[@garrettmastantuono8043]

Did a little bit of napkin math, google claims a high of 350K for temp on Arrakis, thinking people still breath on the thing would suggest air as the fluid meaning gamma as 1.4 and R as 287. With conversions the speed of sound comes out to be 1164.7 ft/s. Even if the linear velocity math is off... Them wingtips be shocking yo.

[@quoniam426]

Recently, scientists have theorized and tried ionized wings to convey air around them as air speed would. Dune Thopters wings seem to have a separated rear wing flap thing that could be a wing ionized control surface. The result of it would be to accelerate air to not necessitate the wing to go as fast as it would be needed ordinarily, thus saving the materials and potentially not reach speed of sound on bigger scales. It's the only thing I can think of to reduce the inconvenience. As for the wing action parts, someone found the solution, an elastic muscle part instead of gears and pîstons... Hinges would still be necessary to obtain attack angle compatible with direction, forewards and rearwards and reducing drag when they don't flap to catch the air (similar to a person using oars)

[@carloshenriquezimmer7543]

About the greatest Lovecraftian HORROR for a Science Fiction autor, THE MATH!, for a flapy-flapy-thopter to create suficient lift, it has to displace a mass of air equal to it's own mass. Continously. Given the density of atmosferic air at 1 ATM , for a Thopter the size of an Bell UH-1 Iroquois, like the ones in the movies, it would take the wingspan of an Antonov An-124 to push enough air down. Continuously. It doesn't matter how F*(king awesome the materials' science from the 20k Duniverse is (yes, I am embarassed, no I do not regret it), NEWTON, ARQUIMEDES AND BERNOULLI WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH THE PROJECT'S MANAGER! That is why the heaviest flapy-flyer in our planet is the Pteropus vampyrus, AKA The Flying Fox, at just over 4 pounds, and a wingspan of MORE THAN 2 YARDS. And it flyes in a weird jittery up-and-down motion, every time it flaps.

[@trigz8626]

Dragonfly wings work very differently compared to other mean of propulsion. I dont have much detail but there is a reason as of why dragonfly are the most efficient flyer for their size on our planet. Its something about the vortex the wings create under them, plus they do not move in up and down, they continue their movement while doing something called « angle of attack ». Also, bigger animals took to the sky in earth’s history. Animals such as quetzalcoalt could weight between 250kg and 350kg, they were as tall as a giraffe and had wingspan similar to that of a plane. Impressive isn’t it?

[@carloshenriquezimmer7543]

@@trigz8626 true, but that does not change the point. A 6 ton thopter would never fly. And the quetzacoalt flied like a bird, using Bernoulli's Effect, nor by air displacement. All pterodactyl-ish things were like this, at least according to the specialists.

[@egoalter1276]

Airspeed pressure differential, vertical component drag and air desplaceme t are all different equations to calculate the same phaenomena. To keep a z ton thing in the air, you have to accelerate z tons of air downwards at 1 g, period. Or you can accelerate a kilogram of air downwards at 60000 g. You can cearly do it with lift fans and rotors, but circular motion is a lot more energy efficient than oscillating motion, so the problem is obvious. Thankfully, arthropods actually move their wings in a figure 8, so its just a fancy offset interference pattern of two circular motions in diagonal planes. As for how viable this is on a large scale, well, there are working models for this in Napier Stokes based aerodynamic simulations that weigh over 3 tons. The french made a real one that was also almost 3 tons.

[@fire304]

Fundamental error in your flight assumption: dragon flies fly using vortex generation, not like a bird. Their wings move back and forth in really short strokes rather than up and down. This is how most insects can get away with camberless (flat) wings

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Which has no bearing on how the thopters are observed operating.

[@fire304]

@@SacredCowShipyards I honestly think that's a miscommunication or misunderstanding of the VFX crew. I just rewatched a clip from part 1 where Paul flies outside of the shield wall and you can clearly see the blades moving up and down, but even birds cannot take off with just up and down motion. Looking at the humming bird, their wings move back and forth, which would be needed to have VTOL capabilities.

[@mrmors1344]

i want to see an ornithopter fly thru a volcanic ash plume. st elmo's fire would be both cool and scary i'd bet. also i'm not sorry but; the wings on the thopter go flap flap flap. flap flap flap the sand in the engine goes grind grind grind....

[@GigiolaCinquetty]

They're not using special composit materials for the flappyflap wingblades... They're uuusiinngg spice maaaan .... Oh looook, the colors, i can heeear them .... 😁🤣🤪

[@Marcus-ki1en]

1. But it looks really cool. 2. We ran out of Upsidasium years ago. 3. The wings don't stop, they move in a figure 8 (what a turn eh?) as if it makes a difference.

[@gcewing]

10,000 rpm seems way higher than needed. Helicopter blades typically spin at around 500 rpm and generate plenty of lift.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Sure, because they're generating lift as they're being spun about. Entirely different mechanic.

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

@@SacredCowShipyards yeah, but bird and insect wings are much more efficient than rotors too.

[@egoalter1276]

Its not about rpm, its about distance travelled per second.

[@zrath67]

The Scallops that do the flappy, also do a filter feed. So it makes sense that they would leave them out in an open field while resting, they need air flow to stay fed and be ready to go. A cramped nutrient poor hanger isn't the best environment for sweet flappy lads.

[@Lectrikfro]

The mollusks also were originally discovered growing on trees if I remember the entry from the encyclopedia correctly, so we are at least not worrying about water use levels needed for an aquatic species

[@karlslicher8520]

They fly using static charge. The anhydrous air conditions lends itself to this being more effective I remember reading.

[@RaderizDorret]

Oh dear Maker. This thing makes the Thunderscreech seem downright pedestrian by comparison. And the aerodynamics involved in that many supersonic/transonic transitions means there's no fucking way that thing should be able to generate lift.

[@larryaftertheroad6174]

It's good to know that after 20k years ,they finally found a way to recycle all the wind turbine blades

[@kentlindal5422]

How do they work? Their creator was on a staggering amount of drugs.

[@Kira-zy2ro]

That LEGO navigator is so ridiculously awesome!

[@xxxlonewolf49]

ARE birds real? Or just drones...for ALIENS

[@TheRyujinLP]

O_O!!

[@vonfaustien3957]

I mean ive eatten birds and people actively hint wild ones. If they were drone i think someone would have noticed

[@sicstar]

B.I.R.D. Bipedal.Independent.Reconnisance.Drone.

[@TheRyujinLP]

@@sicstarI have but one regret, I can only give this comment 1 like.

[@xxxlonewolf49]

@@sicstar sounds more like a robo-person than a flyer :😜

[@ozzy6852]

I remember watching the movie and thinking about the problems with the ornithopters. They are a unique design for a sifi aircraft and I really appreciate that they don’t just use some generic hover tech for their propulsion, but in the context of the story and setting they don’t make much sense at all. I think a more sensible engine tech for an aircraft designed for Arrakis would be something like a valveless pulse jet. They have no moving parts at all so sand wouldn’t be a problem for them, they can be started and used from a stand still unlike a ramjet, and they are a very unique engine so you still get to keep some of that cool factor that the ornithopters have. Of course they have their own problems like noise and efficiency but I think that those can be pretty easily hand waved away like most sifi tech usually is anyways.

[@stephenlightfoot9627]

Should have stuck with bird wings. Much better with sand and more graceful.

[@nobodyimportant72]

If you're modelling the flappy-flappy my guess is that you should be using some kind of Sine-wave. I'm thinking the math for that should work a whole lot better than assuming some kind of instantaneous start and stop at each end of a flap.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Sure, but the math is also a lot harder.

[@SilviaDragoness]

For dimensions and weight, maybe look at the official add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator that was released recently.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Of course that came out right after I finished producing this episode.

[@kristiankho]

A thopther is an example of how a designer would create things if there are no engineers involved.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Precisely.

[@matthiuskoenig3378]

The Irony being real life research and development into ornithopters has one of their advantages being the are quieter than equvilient rotor or jet craft

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Though most of your ornithopters are very much bird-oriented.

[@Eulemunin]

I think the assumption about wing speed might be off by a magnitude or three. Not an expert but the way Dragonfly wings generate lift is by angle of attack. The twist of the wing gives the lower pressure, not shape. So scaling up makes the surface area more useful than speed.

[@protogenxl]

The Lexx moths were a lot quieter.....

[@danb9312]

Test plane XF-84H had a propeller that spun faster than the speed of sound that made it the loudest aircraft ever constructed. Just found your channel and love it!

[@Grimmance]

One would think nonstop cavitation in a 10foot area would be an issue even if the fluid being cavitated is only air.

[@lordwunglerbeckett]

What I fail to understand is why don't they employ, you know, airships? They can float, don't deafen everyone within hearing radius, and they b___dy airships, what more can you want?

[@Keestral]

They do though. Those are their heavy lift vehicles. The carriers for the spice harvesters used bladders to augment their lift capacity when picking them up. The Arkonen landing ships/gunships also used that tech after reentry.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

What he said. The real problem is they're slow, to the point that the carryalls can't even outrun storms.

[@quietdignityandgrace]

Imagine a Mach 3 sonic boom at 10,000 times a minute. WHAT? I can't hear you over the blood gushing out of my ear holes. I'm gonna lie down for a bit. Not from the blood loss, from the percussions shattering my skeleton.

[@umad42]

You should look into the universe of Schlock Mercenary, they traverse the galaxy by ripping themselves apart, shoving themselves through dozens of tiny wormholes, then re-assembling themselves on the other side. They call this drive the teraport.

[@Donkey_Glossolalia]

"The only difference between science & fvcking around is documenting it"😂

[@enque01]

Lol. Great logic. Hummingbird small. 5000 flaps per minute. Big things are bigger, so they must flap faster! Let's say 10.000 flaps per minute! In reality: A chicken is bigger. Chicken flaps 180 flaps per minute. An eagle is even bigger, and flaps about 120 flaps per minute. A condor is even bigger, and flaps perhaps 60 flaps per minute. Your logic was defeated by a regular ordinary farm chicken.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

You get how bird wings scale up faster than their fuselages, right? And how this craft is proportioned equivalently to a dragonfly, right?

[@enque01]

​@@SacredCowShipyards Oh sorry - am I wrong here? Coz here I thought that the square-cube law was exactly opposite of what you just said. And here I thought the dragonflies bpm of 1800 was a number even lower than the hummingbirds 5000. Ooops! My bad, a silly mistake! I even thought the reynolds numbers of larger wings were more favorable than for small wings, allowing them to flap slower. And - haha HEAR THIS - I was so stupid that I thought literally every flying thing I've ever seen in my entire life flapped their flappies slower the larger they got. BUT HEY I MUST BE REMEMBERING EVERYTHING WRONG FROM KINDERGARTEN. So just to be absolutely sure that I'm an absolute idiot let's just check with something the EXACT same density and size as an ornithopter. Like A FREAKIN HELICOPTER. The main rotor of a helicopter have flappies that are way thinner than the ornithopter flappies, so this comparison should be pessimistic. Those helicopter flappies spin at 300 rpm. Which - when you compensate for the much larger volume of air that they sweep compared to how short distance the thopter wings beat - we gotta multiply with something to get the expected number for a thopter. The thopter wings sweep approximately 1/20 of a full revolution per flap, but assuming they fly like dragonflies they produce lift even on the return stroke, so 1/10. So we gotta multiply 300 rpm with 10 to get the pessimistic BPM for the thopter flappies. Oh! And I almost forgot, the thopter has 4 pairs of wings, so we gotta divide that by 4. Sooo..... 300x(20/2)/4 equals..... 750 beats per minute. WAIT A MINUTE......... that's WAY less than ten thousand! Who woulda known! Does that mean the wingtips move slower than the speed of sound? [checks on a piece of paper] OMG it's a quarter of the speed of sound! So they're not even close to breaking the sound barrier. So the sound of them should be like a subwhoofer blasting at 750/60 = 12.5 Hz per wing pair. And there's 4 wing pairs, so the sound should be 50 Hz. Wait - what sound do they make in the movie? [opens up Audacity to measure the frequency of the sound in the ornithopter scenes] - oh look! It's 57 Hz in the movie! It's almost as if the mechanical artist for the movie did some kind of sanity check with an aeronautics engineer during the design of the thing and the sound engineer seems to have consulted with the same people. How strange! Is it really sensible for them to have done that in one of the best designed movies of the decade? It's almost as if........... you hand-picked the max speed of the fastest flapping thing in the whole damn universe and multiplied that by 2 for no other reason than to make a video that sounded sensational? Or was it just an honest mistake?

[@SacredCowShipyards]

I'm sorry that no one ever taught you the concept of ratios. I'll leave you to your rage-commenting.

[@shanehislop5360]

In Dune part one, when Duncan Ornithopter gets hit by a missile I suspect that the shield gets knocked out. I think there is even a special effects co-ordinator talking about how much damage the missile does to knock the shield out.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

It's hard to say whether it got knocked out or just went back to transparent. I wouldn't poke one with a lasgun to check.

[@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei]

I think that's just the thing about sci-fi sometimes. Like super big mechs or this ornithopters are super cool in concept, but wouldn't be very useful or even possible in real life. But as long as the concept is cool, we can just use it in our stories anyways, just as we write stuff about dragons, zombies, magic and whatnot.

[@sosig6445]

actually... rotating motion is WORSE i'd argue for desert envivorments than oscillating motion. You can't completely seal a rotating joint. But you can cover up an oscillating joint with a a flexible material similalry to how we use leather as a protective cover over our car's gear shifter. Now granted you don't see such protective cover in the movie.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Your helioflopters and automobiles literally have rubber boots on their rotating shafts.

[@sosig6445]

@@SacredCowShipyards But it's not seamless as it CAN'T be seamless

[@ew6074]

The US Navy ran into the multi sonic booms a second issue when they tried to make a supersonic prop plane. The XF-84 Thunderscreech. Look it up if you want to see how it turned out.

[@davidboose8426]

When I was in college I took ground school because I needed to fill some credits. Our instructor defined a helicopter as 100,000 nuts and bolts flying in loose formation.