Why Don't Jumbo Jets Flap Their Wings?: Flying Animals, Flying Machines, and How They Are Different Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an unusual book with an unusual title, posing a startling question which might never occur to a typical reader -- why don't airliners use the wing-flapping strategy evolved by nature and employed by ancient pterosaurs as well as modern birds, bats and insects? The book's subtitle, "Flying Animals, Flying Machines, and How They Are Different," foreshadows the author's intent to take the question seriously and provide an answer supported by an interesting and wide-ranging discussion drawn from the contrasting (but conceptually related) worlds of biology and aeronautical engineering.
Prof. Alexander, an entomologist by profession, organizes the book into ten chapters dealing with flying animals vs. flying machines, opposing gravity with lift, overcoming drag with thrust, the complex problems of turning and manuevering, the role of the tail, the human need for flight instruments, the art of soaring, vertical takeoff and hovering, predation and aerial combat, and unconventional flight as embodied in ornithopters and human-powered aircraft. A seven-page Epilogue delivers the author's "bottom line" response to the query contained in the title.
The main narrative is enriched with many technical details, historical anecdotes, and bits of biological and aeronautical ephememera which help keep the reader interested. Good quality line-drawing illustrations supplement the text throughout. The material on helicopters, human-powered flight, and ornithopters is more extensive than usually found in popular aviation literature, and of course the author's professional expertise in natural flight lends depth and authority to his analyses of aerial locomotion by insects and animals. I recommend this book to anyone wishing to acquire a broader knowledge of the problem of flight as solved first by nature herself and again (much later) through the intellectual efforts of Earth's most intelligent species to date.

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