I say "without a motor vehicle" because I know there's light aircraft you can get that would cost an amount comparable to a personal motor vehicle. But I'm discussing this; mostly as a thought experiment; as to whether or not there's wings you could attach to your arms and achieve lift by acquiring a high enough speed without a motor vehicle. (Let's say, rolling downhill in roller blades or a skateboard or something like that. Presumably also wearing protective body armor with springs in case anything goes wrong.)

 

For instance, suppose you had encased your arms in wings designed in a similar shape to airplane wings. What would the scaling effects be? Would the most efficient shape at a small scale be the same shape as the most efficient one at a large scale?

 

As well, what would the scaling effects be on speed required? Assuming the ratio of wing size to body size was the same as an airplane's wing size to fuselage size, would you need, let's say, only a tenth as much speed at a hundredth as much mass or something like that?

Edited February 14, 20205 yr by ScienceNostalgia101

Compare with a hang glider (larger area that works at lower speed) or wind suit (needs high speed to get lift)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingsuit_flying

Assuming constant coefficient of lift (somewhat reliable but fails catastrophically after stall point), lift goes up linearly with area, but with the square of apparent wind speed

With 1/10th the speed you would need the same area to get 1/100th the lift.