The Artifact: Ornithopters of Dune

interstellar Imperium. In Herbert's original novel, the author notes that thoptors are quote any aircraft capable of sustained wing beat flight in the manner of birds, and the exact details of this technology are then largely left to the reader's imagination, as well as the imaginations of numerous illustrators and storyboard artists throughout the book's sixty year history. These interpretations vary greatly,

exploring the thopters biomechanical aspects to varying degrees. As such, we see depictions of ornithopters that range from elegant bird like machines to vehicles with big flapping wings to things that only slightly indulge the overall concept. For instance, the ornithopters in the nineteen eighty four film adaptation of Dune are boxy, bulky, and feature small fixed wings that seem

more decorative than functional. One gets the impression that these are meant to fly more due to the Dune universe's fictional anti gravity Holtzman effect rather than anything aerodynamic. Now, as a side note, I do want to point out that the harconin thopters in nineteen eighty four's Dune look a good bit cooler than the Atreades ones. You can still find some old revel scale model kits of the harconin theopter, and I think these would paint up nicely

if you can get your hands on one. Anyway, the Sci Fi Channel minute series essentially delivered much the same the Ornithopter as a mere futuristic aircraft, only without the baroque design of nineteen eighty four's Doom. Eventually, however, the wings would flap because the acclaim twenty twenty one and twenty twenty four film adaptations of Doune envisionedthopters as a kind of fusion of dragonfly and apache assault helicopter, a design that depends on multiple rapidly moving wing blades in

order to hover and soar above the sands of Aracus. Subjectively, I think these hit just the right spot, at least feeling both aeronautically realistic and sufficiently majestic and intimidating. The dragonfly comparison is also sound, as Herbert himself compared the

flight of ornithopters to the flight of insects. In the novel, we read that ornithopters come in varying forms, including drone ornithopters and observation theopters, and the most recent film adaptations explored different models as well, from royal ornithopters and observation ornithopters to troop carriers and air to ground assault craft. Now, while we don't have a ravel scale model of any of these, we at least have the Lego doom A

Treadees royal ornithopters set with flapping swooping wings. Of course, I have yet to get my hands on one of these. Here in the real world, we of course don't have commonplace airplanes with flapping wings, though not for lack of trying. As discussed in Andersen and Bowden's Introduction to Flight, humanity's oldest dreams of flying were inherently biommetic. We looked to flying animals, usually birds, and concocted various schemes by which

artificial wings would provide both propulsion and lift. These doom designs varied from wing attachments for human arms to more advanced but still equally flawed concepts such as Leonardo da Vinci's glider esque ornithopter sketch with wings that flapped both downward and backward to provide lift and propulsion, just one of several spectacular Renaissance flying machines that da Vinci dreamed up.

According to Anderson and Boden, it wasn't until seventeen ninety nine and the work of English inventor George Kayley that serious human flight engineers separated the principles of lift and propulsion. Quote. He proposed and demonstrated that lift can be obtained from a fixed straight wing inclined to the airstream, while propulsion can be provided by some independent mechanisms such as paddles or air strews. That's not to say ornithopter technology is

completely beyond this. Flat powered flight can and has been done, at least for small flying machines and or limited distance at an experimental level, a nineteen thirty seven French design, the Rio ten two t Allarion, never flew, but is sometimes held up as a possible inspiration for Herbert's thopters, as is the work in the nineteen forties by Adelbert Schmidt which resulted in the first successful crude ornithopter flights.

The technology has remained the domain of experimentation and RC hobbyists, and its brightest applications maybe in the future of uncrude drones. Naturally, Dune is far future science fiction, and we can either ignore the technical questions or anithopters might raise, or assume that humans in the far future, humans that are capable of traveling between stars have mastered feats of biomimetic design

and engineering that elude us today. But I do want to highlight one of the weirder explanations for how Herbert's dooptors might work, found in the nineteen eighty four Dune Encyclopedia. It's a book I grew up borrowing over and over again from the local library, and I was lucky enough to snag a used copy for myself several years ago now.

The book was originally advertised as a complete and authorized companion to the doone novels, of which there were only four at the time, with Frank Herbert's Heretics of Day publishing later that same year. So while Herbert gave this book his quote delighted approval, it is actually the work of Willis E. McNelly and several contributing authors. It provides various explanations and histories that are not found in preceding novels, are not reflected in subsequent novels, and is generally not

considered cannon. It is, however, tremendous fun and has entries on everything from spice cookie recipes to detailed histories of

various characters, creatures, and factions. The entry for ornithopters is a doozy, however, attributing the vehicle's rapid flapping not to a central mechanical innovation, but rather to a domesticated organism known as a heart scallop, an alien land mollusk that begins life, we are told as an airborne polyp, before fixing itself to a tree or cliff face, where its muscular contractions pump through air to filter out microbes for

food and so. According to the Dune Encyclopedia Human engineers eventually domesticated this species and put it to work at the heart of their flying machines, providing an organic power source for artificial wings. So the next time you watch the recent Dune movies with their terrifying and majestic sequences of thopt or flight over the desert planet, please imagine

a pulsating mollusk at the heart of each vehicle. Again, it may not be cannon, but it's delightfully weird and perhaps not out of step with the power of terrestrial mollusks, which do both strong muscles, they create resilient materials and

generate impressive grips. I must have read this Dune Encyclopedia entry when I was in junior high, but had forgotten about it until my friend Brian brought it to my attention again, and initially I did not believe him till I grabbed my copy and turned to page four sixteen Kolwahad. I was profoundly stirred. Tune in for additional editions of the artifact the Monster fact or Animalius du Pindium each week as all ways. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow Your Mind dot.