But for true powered controlled flight—it is exactly similarity to birds that gave them confidence as avian flight control is literally the source of their key innovation.
Why do you think the confidence came from this and not from the fact that
they downloaded a library of existing flyer designs from the smithsonian and then developed a wind tunnel to test said designs at high throughput before selecting a few for full-scale physical prototypes.
I said for “true powered controlled fllight”, which nobody had yet achieved. The existing flyer designs that worked were gliders. From the sources I’ve seen (wikipedia, top google hits etc), they used the wind tunnel primarily to gather test data on the aerodynamics of flyer designs in general but mainly wings and later propellers. Wing warping isn’t mentioned in conjunction with wind tunnel testing.
Why do you think the confidence came from this and not from the fact that
?
I said for “true powered controlled fllight”, which nobody had yet achieved. The existing flyer designs that worked were gliders. From the sources I’ve seen (wikipedia, top google hits etc), they used the wind tunnel primarily to gather test data on the aerodynamics of flyer designs in general but mainly wings and later propellers. Wing warping isn’t mentioned in conjunction with wind tunnel testing.
gotcha, thanks!