[ph4rsikal]

China calls it the low-altitude economy, and besides human transportation there is a lot that can be done. Personally, I believe that propeller-driven devices are too dangerous and noisy, but there might be innovations coming out of China that Europe can't

[bethekidyouwant]

Everything that flies is driven with a loud dangerous spinning thing (propeller)

[nandomrumber]

Birds.

[tsimionescu]

Bird flight doesn't scale significantly. You can deliver very small objects via bird, and perhaps build a bird-like drone that does the same. But you can't build a human-carrying bird.

[antipurist]

Human-carrying birds have been built.

Piloted ornithopter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-qS7oN-3tA

Human-powered ornithopter: https://youtu.be/0E77j1imdhQ?si=Dd5hLla27Pz8gJNe&t=100

Also, Quetzalcoatlus northropi could've been powerful enough to carry a human.

[shtzvhdx]

That's not a bird. Thats an airplane flapping its wings.

[fc417fc802]

We haven't figured out how to scale it _yet_.

[tsimionescu]

It's very possible, and in fact most likely, that it can't scale. Insect flight is an even better example - the mechanisms that allow most insects to fly simply don't work past a few grams of weight. So, it is simply impossible to create an insect-like drone that can carry a human.

I expect the exact same is true for birds - the kinds of effects that allow birds to fly with so little energy compared to a propeller-based aircraft are almost certainly not scalable, due to the fundamental properties of air as a gas. As far as I know, bird flight is made possible by complex turbulence effects induced by the microscopic structure of their feathers. It's very unlikely this effect could skale to 100kg of weight.

[meindnoch]

Could work for delivering high-value low-weight items, like illicit drugs. Not much else.