[robotresearcher]

What do you mean 'no'? It's an empirical fact that very talented designers considered flapping wing flying machines, before they had the information that we have now. They were not 'overly simplistic' except in deep hindsight.

[laretluval]

We aren't done designing flying machines. Maybe it will turn out that when we have sophisticated enough control mechanisms and materials, flapping will turn out to be the way to go after all.

Of course natural evolution has found only local minima in the fitness landscape, but as a designer it's been running its algorithm a lot longer than humans have. Its local minima may well be better than ours, and so worth trying to imitate.

[robotresearcher]

Refer to the grandparent post as to why large flapping machines are unlikely.

This thread is so weird.