Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lammin. This is the Artifact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing in on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time.
Speaker 2: In this episode, we're going to dive once more into
Speaker 2: the fictional world of Frank Herbert's Doom to discuss the ornithopter,
Speaker 2: the predominant form of airborne travel in the far future
Speaker 2: interstellar Imperium. In Herbert's original novel, the author notes that
Speaker 2: thoptors are quote any aircraft capable of sustained wing beat
Speaker 2: flight in the manner of birds, and the exact details
Speaker 2: of this technology are then largely left to the reader's imagination,
Speaker 2: as well as the imaginations of numerous illustrators and storyboard
Speaker 2: artists throughout the book's sixty year history. These interpretations vary greatly,
Speaker 2: exploring the thopters biomechanical aspects to varying degrees. As such,
Speaker 2: we see depictions of ornithopters that range from elegant bird
Speaker 2: like machines to vehicles with big flapping wings to things
Speaker 2: that only slightly indulge the overall concept. For instance, the
Speaker 2: ornithopters in the nineteen eighty four film adaptation of Dune
Speaker 2: are boxy, bulky, and feature small fixed wings that seem
Speaker 2: more decorative than functional. One gets the impression that these
Speaker 2: are meant to fly more due to the Dune universe's
Speaker 2: fictional anti gravity Holtzman effect rather than anything aerodynamic. Now,
Speaker 2: as a side note, I do want to point out
Speaker 2: that the harconin thopters in nineteen eighty four's Dune look
Speaker 2: a good bit cooler than the Atreades ones. You can
Speaker 2: still find some old revel scale model kits of the
Speaker 2: harconin theopter, and I think these would paint up nicely
Speaker 2: if you can get your hands on one. Anyway, the
Speaker 2: Sci Fi Channel minute series essentially delivered much the same
Speaker 2: the Ornithopter as a mere futuristic aircraft, only without the
Speaker 2: baroque design of nineteen eighty four's Doom. Eventually, however, the
Speaker 2: wings would flap because the acclaim twenty twenty one and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four film adaptations of Doune envisionedthopters as a
Speaker 2: kind of fusion of dragonfly and apache assault helicopter, a
Speaker 2: design that depends on multiple rapidly moving wing blades in
Speaker 2: order to hover and soar above the sands of Aracus. Subjectively,
Speaker 2: I think these hit just the right spot, at least
Speaker 2: feeling both aeronautically realistic and sufficiently majestic and intimidating. The
Speaker 2: dragonfly comparison is also sound, as Herbert himself compared the
Speaker 2: flight of ornithopters to the flight of insects. In the novel,
Speaker 2: we read that ornithopters come in varying forms, including drone
Speaker 2: ornithopters and observation theopters, and the most recent film adaptations
Speaker 2: explored different models as well, from royal ornithopters and observation
Speaker 2: ornithopters to troop carriers and air to ground assault craft. Now,
Speaker 2: while we don't have a ravel scale model of any
Speaker 2: of these, we at least have the Lego doom A
Speaker 2: Treadees royal ornithopters set with flapping swooping wings. Of course,
Speaker 2: I have yet to get my hands on one of these.
Speaker 2: Here in the real world, we of course don't have
Speaker 2: commonplace airplanes with flapping wings, though not for lack of trying.
Speaker 2: As discussed in Andersen and Bowden's Introduction to Flight, humanity's
Speaker 2: oldest dreams of flying were inherently biommetic. We looked to
Speaker 2: flying animals, usually birds, and concocted various schemes by which
Speaker 2: artificial wings would provide both propulsion and lift. These doom
Speaker 2: designs varied from wing attachments for human arms to more
Speaker 2: advanced but still equally flawed concepts such as Leonardo da
Speaker 2: Vinci's glider esque ornithopter sketch with wings that flapped both
Speaker 2: downward and backward to provide lift and propulsion, just one
Speaker 2: of several spectacular Renaissance flying machines that da Vinci dreamed up.
Speaker 2: According to Anderson and Boden, it wasn't until seventeen ninety
Speaker 2: nine and the work of English inventor George Kayley that
Speaker 2: serious human flight engineers separated the principles of lift and propulsion. Quote.
Speaker 2: He proposed and demonstrated that lift can be obtained from
Speaker 2: a fixed straight wing inclined to the airstream, while propulsion
Speaker 2: can be provided by some independent mechanisms such as paddles
Speaker 2: or air strews. That's not to say ornithopter technology is
Speaker 2: completely beyond this. Flat powered flight can and has been done,
Speaker 2: at least for small flying machines and or limited distance
Speaker 2: at an experimental level, a nineteen thirty seven French design,
Speaker 2: the Rio ten two t Allarion, never flew, but is
Speaker 2: sometimes held up as a possible inspiration for Herbert's thopters,
Speaker 2: as is the work in the nineteen forties by Adelbert
Speaker 2: Schmidt which resulted in the first successful crude ornithopter flights.
Speaker 2: The technology has remained the domain of experimentation and RC hobbyists,
Speaker 2: and its brightest applications maybe in the future of uncrude drones. Naturally,
Speaker 2: Dune is far future science fiction, and we can either
Speaker 2: ignore the technical questions or anithopters might raise, or assume
Speaker 2: that humans in the far future, humans that are capable
Speaker 2: of traveling between stars have mastered feats of biomimetic design
Speaker 2: and engineering that elude us today. But I do want
Speaker 2: to highlight one of the weirder explanations for how Herbert's
Speaker 2: dooptors might work, found in the nineteen eighty four Dune Encyclopedia.
Speaker 2: It's a book I grew up borrowing over and over
Speaker 2: again from the local library, and I was lucky enough
Speaker 2: to snag a used copy for myself several years ago now.
Speaker 2: The book was originally advertised as a complete and authorized
Speaker 2: companion to the doone novels, of which there were only
Speaker 2: four at the time, with Frank Herbert's Heretics of Day
Speaker 2: publishing later that same year. So while Herbert gave this
Speaker 2: book his quote delighted approval, it is actually the work
Speaker 2: of Willis E. McNelly and several contributing authors. It provides
Speaker 2: various explanations and histories that are not found in preceding novels,
Speaker 2: are not reflected in subsequent novels, and is generally not
Speaker 2: considered cannon. It is, however, tremendous fun and has entries
Speaker 2: on everything from spice cookie recipes to detailed histories of
Speaker 2: various characters, creatures, and factions. The entry for ornithopters is
Speaker 2: a doozy, however, attributing the vehicle's rapid flapping not to
Speaker 2: a central mechanical innovation, but rather to a domesticated organism
Speaker 2: known as a heart scallop, an alien land mollusk that
Speaker 2: begins life, we are told as an airborne polyp, before
Speaker 2: fixing itself to a tree or cliff face, where its
Speaker 2: muscular contractions pump through air to filter out microbes for
Speaker 2: food and so. According to the Dune Encyclopedia Human engineers
Speaker 2: eventually domesticated this species and put it to work at
Speaker 2: the heart of their flying machines, providing an organic power
Speaker 2: source for artificial wings. So the next time you watch
Speaker 2: the recent Dune movies with their terrifying and majestic sequences
Speaker 2: of thopt or flight over the desert planet, please imagine
Speaker 2: a pulsating mollusk at the heart of each vehicle. Again,
Speaker 2: it may not be cannon, but it's delightfully weird and
Speaker 2: perhaps not out of step with the power of terrestrial mollusks,
Speaker 2: which do both strong muscles, they create resilient materials and
Speaker 2: generate impressive grips. I must have read this Dune Encyclopedia
Speaker 2: entry when I was in junior high, but had forgotten
Speaker 2: about it until my friend Brian brought it to my
Speaker 2: attention again, and initially I did not believe him till
Speaker 2: I grabbed my copy and turned to page four sixteen Kolwahad.
Speaker 2: I was profoundly stirred. Tune in for additional editions of
Speaker 2: the artifact the Monster fact or Animalius du Pindium each
Speaker 2: week as all ways. You can email us at contact
Speaker 2: at stuff to Blow Your Mind dot.
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