If humans had wings, how big would they need to be in order to support our weight enough for us to fly?

Well I don't have an exact answer but here are a few facts
Bald eagle - weight up to 15 lb, wingspan up to 8.5 feet
Osprey - weight up to 4.5 lb, wingspan up to 4.5 feet.

from this small sample I see that for every 3 times increase in weight the wingspan increases by a factor of 2. It would take someone who is better at math than me to figure out how large the wingspan for a human would have to be, but it would probably vary with the individual human's weight.

sorry i couldn't be more help.

It would take more than wings. You would need chest muscles four feet thick, and much bigger and more efficient lungs, a stronger heart... hollow bones would help... and there would be no reason to carry around a three-pound brain when a bird brain is perfectly adequate.

Think about a hang glider..people can fly on those for hours in the desert by catching up-drafts. Assuming we could flap our wings, then the wings would be slightly smaller. Hang Gliding may give you an idea of how big our wings would have to be.

excerpt from: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=40915&page=1

Look at hang-gliders: they are essentially strap-on wings which allow people to glide. If we had the musculature to flap them, they would probably be able to provide the necessary lift; if we put on quite a small moter, they lift quite well.

Which means that the wings on conventionally drawn angels are probably too small if the angels as much as humans.

Even if you had a large enough wing area, you still have a problem. Humans don't posess the right type of muscle tissue nor the strength to use a wing, if it were attached in place of an arm. We'd make a glider is all. Proper flight would still be impossible.
Edit: Thanks Darkling

Believe it or not I do actually want to know this for a very good reason so I set about doing some research and have discovered this page:


http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=40915&page=1

inconclusive, but interesting if you fancy a look.

Assume an eagle is 15-lbs 8.5ft
Osprey is 4.5 and 4.5

That is a difference of 3+1/3 in weight to 1+8/9 size

Assume you are 180-lbs
You are 40X than an Osprey
That is 3.0639 Orders of 3+1/3 (logb(3+1/3)(40))
That means you are 3.0639 powers of 1+8/9.
7.0189 Times larger than an Osprey

or

31.585ft

If you are 100lbs than you would have 23.15ft wingspan
250lbs... 37.57ft

Conclusion, the heavier you are the bigger your wings
(The harder you fall)

you cant simply look at the wing span to weight ratio that was the theory behind the fact that a bee cannot fly because its wing span is to short for how much it weighs. but if you have a rotating wing as opposed to a flapping wing the wing span can be much shorter.

have you seen Xman 3?

unorthadoxx has a good point. we are so fixated on looking like angels we forgot about all the other things in nature that can fly. like big fat wasps, lady bugs and moths. granit insects don't have circitorly systems that transport energy and oxeygen to the mucels and tissue, they use osmoses. but it doesn't mean we csnt adapt and use those.

i don't know about you but i weigh 98 pounds and am 5'3" and DO NOT want 20 feet of wings on my back. itwould be like piggy backing an 8 year old

your chest would have to change to make a counter weight to balance you out. plus your bones would have to be hollow.

To fly like and eagle your wing span would have to be about 30 feet. But let me say that there are many ways to "fly" with wings.

If you could move forward fast enough, you can get lift with smaller wings. Like and airplane. The wings would have to be slightly curved at the top to create the pressure difference that creates lift.

If you can flap your wings fast enough like a bee you can also achieve lift with small strong light wings.

You can also glide and catch updrafts... It takes more skill. Most birds know how to do it inherently.

The material makes a different. The flapping motion makes a difference as well.

Greetings all, this is a question that has plagued me for some time, i wish to see, nay wish to BE a winged human (homo-avian?), the following may be a little difficult to follow but here goes.

Ive used the Andean Condor as a base (being one of the largest flying birds)

aprox wingspan - 292cm (1 wing - 146cm)
weight - 13kg
body length - 126cm
wing length (2/3rd body length) - 84cm


Wing area - length x width
146 x 84
12 264cm squared (24528cm for both wings)

now calculating weight and surface ratio is...

24528 : 13
1886.8 :1

Therefore it requires 1886.8 square cm of surface to hold 1 kg aloft.

now ill be using my height and weight for the next bit so it will vary if you use different heights and weights.

wingspan - (x)
weight - 66kg
length (height) - 200cm
wing area - (y)
wing width - 133cm (2/3rds of length remember)

Using the previously found ratio 1:1886.8

1886.8 x 66 = 124528.8 = (y)
my weight requires 124528.8 square cm to keep aloft

area = wingspan x width
124528.8 = (x) x 133
(x) = 124528.8/133
(x) = 936.3


From these calculations i would need a wingspan of 936cm from tip to tip and about 133cm wide at the midpoint

These numbers are approximates because a wing isn't a square so length x width doesn't give the best numbers, but its something, if anyone cares to add to what i have written, or if Ive done something wrong point it out please, and hopefully we will see people flying around instead of driving (just think how much you would save on fuel o.O)

I hope all that made sense to you out there :)

ok lets see . . . as to the size of wings to support average human weight . . . well to lift 200 lbs. you'd need a 14 ft. span a 42 in. chord a 24.5% chord camber thickness tapering from 2.205 in. at start to .5 in. at the end and a 5 % angle of attack for maximum lift . . . the only problem is you'd have to hit 23 mph. to get up in the air . . .so find a way to flap em fast enough and your set

For sustained flight, look at the human-powered aircraft that have been built and flown in the last 30 years or so.

First was the Gossamer Condor (if I remember right), and later that was a design by the same fellow, Paul MacCready), which crossed the English channel.

This should give you a rough idea.

They would have too be long and a little wider than what we are depending on how we would be able too use them control that matters also

-Darius Denzel Wesley

you would also need to account for the extra weight of the wings, when those birds were weighed they most likely had their wings in tact. if you somehow made a 31.565 feet wingspan for a 180 lb person and had the skill you might still fail because of the added weight of the wings.

i dunno for sure but lets just say the weight of an eagles wing is 1 lb each.

2lb eagle wingspan / 13lb eagle body (without wings) * 180lb human body (without wings) = 27.69 lb human wingspan. therefore resulting in a 207.69 lbs overall and needing about an extra 2.5-3 feet of wingspan.

this would also assume that the wing weight to the body weight is proportional

I have a very interesting theory, on humans flying,
anything in life is possible,

I Have a idea on making this happen without a engine, just useing human strength to fly, yes it involves wings, and yes i can make them wings move with enough strength to gain lift, i've had this idea now for a while, and i am glad that there are people out there that are also thinking down these lines, (not including the pesimists), anybody seriously looking into making history, then please feel free to contact me at chris@eppspainters.co.uk. I'll be honest and confirm that i haven't even gone into making a model yet, but i can't let my idea rest any longer, have to know wheather i can do this. And no i am not crazy.

It would be a better design to change the weight of a human, make them lighter with a lighter bone frame and no extras like external genitalia, like a bird.

I think the question is not to say hey, we'll need pneumatised bones, more muscles or any other biologically fixed stuff. We'll need to concentrate on how to get this to work.

I've seen someone post about having 1 metre wings on each side. I wonder what the design is like, but it should be interesting. And seems like he's using more gliding techniques than real flying - which is logical too to sustain flight.

With regards to a bird's keel (large sternum) that packs muscles to it, we could probably think about a car's piston and create a device strapped to the chest with pumping action driven perhaps by electricity to power the downstroke fast enough to generate lift.

I was thinking about a rotating wing actually .. that is after flapping downwards, the wing is tilted to reduce surface area when you pull the wing back up. that will reduce a lot of resistance when you're trying to bring the wing to a pre-powerstroke position.

With regards to joints, I'm quite uncertain as to how many joints to use.

I think looking at the flight of the goose would be pretty useful, since it has a heavy body like us. I was previously thinking about an eagle holding a prey being analogous to us having a heavy lower body (think distribution of weight).

Do you also notice that when some insects fly, they'll lift off diagonally backwards?
And whether to flap the wings towards the front or down your sides?

Intriguing, but worth finding out..
anyone wants to discuss can email me at glennlcm@hotmail.com. i'm a life sciences student at the national university of singapore and this question of creating human flight has been on my mind for a long time now.

It has occurred to me that most people interested in this topic are thinking about having wings like angels. I have thought about this topic long and hard and one day would like to be able to fly like this myself. But through math I have figured out that it would be ridiculous to have wings like most birds because they would have to be extremely large and bulky. So I thought to myself... "why not have wings like wasps or hummingbirds?" These amazing animals do not have larger wing muscles like other flying creatures and have relatively smaller wings than most other avionic creatures. If for example we surgically attached hummingbird wings on someones back we could fly with less muscle mass and have relatively smaller wings. For a 100 lb. Person wing size would have to be approximately 14 feet with hummingbird wings instead of 23 feet with eagle wings. I hope that this has been helpful to you personally on this very intriguing subject.

Going by the statistics that were supplied by yoho05, i have done some statistics and come up with these results:
A 140 pound person would need a wingspan of about 56 feet in order to maintain flight.
A 160 pound person would need a wingspan of about 64 feet.
A 180 pound person would need a wingspan of about 71 feet.
A 200 pound person would need a wingspan of about 79 feet.

These assumptions however are not accurate because the human body is not aerodynamic enough to fly with the same ease as a bird. This would mean that the spans could be as much as 20 feet longer, this is not something i would know how to test, so im affraid i cant give you any exact answers, but thats a very baseline idea.

It's also not just the span you should account for but perhaps how far they'd go down your sides, and other dimensions, there's many factors when it comes to human flight.

No one ever considered that wings could be developed the way bees evolved. Take a look at a bee's body size and weight in comparison to that of its wings. The body is much bigger and heavier, and there is relatively little muscle controlling the movement. They key is the movement of the wings and the way they flip vertically at a very fast pace. Also note the humming bird. While the movement must be very fast, they also have tiny wings in comparison to their bodies. Bees and hummingbirds have similar concepts in the construction of their wings, so it is much more likely that advances in science could help us to create wings like that. We would need less muscle, less material, less voluntary brain control, but a way to develop a semi-involuntary quick flipping motion in the wings.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/3410

Have you ever stood three feet away from a goose when it takes flight?
I have.

One of the problems I see here is the assumption that with stronger muscles comes more weight. That is not entirely true. My brother and I are pretty close tot he same size and build, but he has always been much stronger than me. Muscle can get stronger without bulking up. Yes, there will always be a certain amount of gain, however, some of that gain is due to the reduction in fat around the muscle.

About three or four years ago, I had parked a ways out at a grocery store. A single Canadian goose landed in the parking lot. He began walking along side me heading in the same direction three to four feet away making quite goose calls. He paused at one point, turned, and then continued in the same direction as before making his quiet goose calls. He paused a second time as we both began hearing a flock of geese approaching. The goose turned in the direction of the geese calling, took two steps and with two flaps of his wings was airborne. The goose did not run, he walked.

So what's my point. If one is considering designing wings to enable actual human flight, one must be sure to design those wings with enough lift that it does not require running to take flight. It is not likely that you will always have a tall building or a cliff to jump off of, so the wings will need to be able to provide at least (just a guesstimate) your weight plus one third in order to enable you to gain flight like the goose.

Just a point you might want to consider.

biggest

Modern birds need at least a square centimetre of wing area for every 4 grams of body mass, so an 80-kilogram human would need two square metres of wing easy :)
will ellis

If we had evolved wings, they would probably be about 15+ feet wide and we would've long since evolved the lighter bone sturcture and the muscles to fly. Ignore all of the comments that say "we would just keep having to add on muscles for each other added on muscle" because they haven't thought through the fact that WE WOULD'VE ALREADY EVOLVED THE LIGHTNESS TO FLY! See what I'm sayin'?

I'm not sure of the exact dimensions, but take a look at a picture of an angel, some of them are ex-humans with wings.

Well, my name is Ramon Valentin and someone once told me why kids aren't afraid of some stuff like jumping from high altitudes or getting hit by a car, etc. That means that if you do not consider the fats and truly do it with to certainty that you will fly, it would wok. I have prepared a model that would fit any human and is still in tests, but i tried it at the beach with a lot of wind, and just opening both 3 ft. long wings( 3 ft. each )I was able to float for like two minutes. My arms got tired and the wind was inpredictible and I was like 7 1/2 feet lifted up in the air, so I fell on the sand. With a little more excersice, and a better phisycal condition, I think that we can just lift off and actually fly. anyody interested in really flying, could suggest something and we could work toghether. I hold a temporary patent on this model. I expires in june 2007. My email is icshatillo-ryen@yahoo.es . Hope to hear from someone really interested. We could really do this and earn money at the same time.

You dont think we could use an electrical power assistance for the downstroke.. like power steering?

Should we examine the bumble bee?

To anyone!!!!!! I am willing to help design and build any kind of small, light-weight strap-on wings, like Ramon Valentin's. My e-mail is nico_sampson@Yahoo.com. please, help me acheive a dream that we all want fulfilled!!

Spruce Goose wings might do it.

I see that this thread is inactive, but hey, I might aswell contribute my knowledge. ;)

The larger your wings the more muscle you need, the more muscle you need the heavier you are, and so you must again increase wing span. It's continuous.

But hang-gliders are, yes, strap-on wings, technically speaking. With light weight, large wings, and just enough muscle-- using the hang-glider theory- you could glide with wings.


Think you're strong enough to glide? Lay flat on your chest, stretch your arms all the way out, flat against the ground, and push down on your arms with enough force to lift your chest just off the ground(no bending joints). See how long you can hold this posture.

With a 20 ft wingspan, a strong, roughly 100 pound person could glide for quite awhile, if winds were fairly gusty. For a heavier person, increase wing-span.

Note to self, while considering bird wing-span, that most ancient, pre-historical birds were only gliders. They were fairly heavy(one even reaching 180 pounds!), with large wingspans, but could glide from tree-top to tree-top; and more. Therefore; humans, with large enough wingspan, light enough weight, and enough muscle, could glide for long periods of time. It would be harder than hang-gliding, but very worthwhile.