Flaviir project trials new forms of wing command

Flying is the art of controlling the air. If you watch any flying object – insect, bird or aircraft – to see how it flies, you can’t see the most crucial aspect, which is how the air flows around and past the body. It’s this that supplies lift, which keeps the object in the air. The air flow is what allows the object to change direction, to swoop and turn. Thrust alone will get you into the air, but it won’t keep you there. If you want to fly, you have to control the air.

How to do it is a complex matter. Gliders aside, living aeronauts do it by combining their control surfaces with their thrust generators – they flap their wings, move them and change their shape in complex ways that we’re only just beginning to understand and can barely emulate. For man-made flying vehicles, the main way to control the flow of air, and therefore enable true flight, is to change the shape of the wings, with flaps and rudders, to deflect the air as it passes over them.