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Okay, we know the type-IIb FG muscle fibers are the strongest stuff we can use. So, the only thing we can do is attach more, but how?

Dragons are 180 cm tall at the shoulders with a total neck+head length of 180 cm, a body 180 cm, and a tail 280 cm. Many of the body's bones are fused together, resulting in decreased/non-existent flexibility there. The neck is long, 2/3 of the total neck+head length. The tail and neck both use a bit of Arambourgiania magic.

Dragon bones have a structure similar to limpet teeth, so basically, goethite fibers in a chitin matrix, kinda like an organic short-fiber composite. Tensile and compressive strengths are 4.5 GPa on average, with the right fiber orientation, of course. There are some bones, I haven't tampered with, that store calcium and phosphorus.

Tendons received an "upgrade" as well, in the form of CNFs, tensile strength is 1.6 GPa.

Dragon wings are broad, soaring wings, similar to that of an eagle, reinforced with actinofibrils.

Dragons dissipate heat through their wings and during exhalation. They use their flight muscles sparingly, and never longer than 90 seconds at a time. They eat fish, meat, fruits, and algae. The primary mode of flight is soaring.

They have six limbs in total: 4 legs and a pair of wings, sandwiched between, just far enough not to interfere with one another.

So, I guess I'll have to pack additional muscle on the keel (mainly because of the extra pair of legs), but I want to pack it in a way that power output increases linearly with muscle weight, how can I do that?

I do know that the force, muscles can exert, is the function of cross-sectional area, if that helps.

Update

Figure time: I originally gave dragons a wingspan of 11 meters and a width of 2 meters. So, the dragon could be 11x2x20=440 kg and have the wing loading of the Quetzalcoatlus northropi. I'm not sure if this is correct or helpful, but here ya go.

Mephistopheles
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    Fun exercise: Compute the power dissipation of the dragon (you may assume that the muscles operate at 20% efficiency, which is better than an ordinary ICE), and then imagine (1) how much oxygen the dragon consumes per minute, (2) how much food the dragon must eat per day and finally (3) imagine a mechanism for the dragon to shed waste heat. – AlexP Feb 23 '19 at 15:43
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    @AlexP: Regarding #3... you do know this is a dragon, right? :) – EvoGamer Feb 23 '19 at 15:50
  • @AlexP Done >:) – Mephistopheles Feb 23 '19 at 15:51
  • According to Peter Dickinson's book Dragons, part (or even all) of the lift dragons have comes from gasses in their body. In Anne McCraffry 'Pern' books the lift for dragons comes from the dragons having teleportation powers. Find your own reason and do not add muscles, add other powers....if you want. (And look at bats, not birds.) – Willeke Feb 23 '19 at 17:52
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    @Willeke A) Even with methane, that'd be extremely dangerous, B) science-based. C) I'm looking at all three, but mostly the Azhdarchidae. – Mephistopheles Feb 23 '19 at 18:01
  • honestly i have no idea – Elias Rowan Albatross Mar 01 '19 at 21:50
  • Regardless of muscle strength, there's an entirely separate problem bounding the size of flying creatures: how big the wing can be before it fails just from its own weight. Make the wing too big, and the effort of flapping it is going to see bones/muscles/whatever tearing through the wing in short order, which obviously kills off anything beyond gliding. I can't give you a hard figure for this limit, especially since you don't actually provide any numbers for wingspan, but it's something you need to keep in mind. I would guess a wingspan >5m to be risky, and >10m is probably unworkable. – Palarran Mar 01 '19 at 23:37
  • @Palarran That's funny, considering the existence of 10-12 m wingspan pterosaurs. And they don't even use my special materials. – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 05:57
  • How can it be a soarer but use its muscles in short burst, Those are two opposing plans, and wastes a lot of muscle weight. That's like saying a person is a sprinter but has the muscles of a long distance runner. – John Mar 02 '19 at 14:19
  • @John What do you mean? – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 14:21
  • Soaring is about holding the wings open for a long time and using natural thermals for altitude instead of beating the wings, but it takes time to slowly ride those thermals up. Soaring in short bursts is contradictory. You would need all the muscles of an active flier for none of the benefit. – John Mar 02 '19 at 14:24
  • @Mephistopheles As I'd said, those limits I offered were guesswork. Evidently, my guesses were conservative, but the basic point still holds, and those pterosaurs were likely at the limit of a workable wingspan (I doubt they flapped their wings much at all). If you move to materials beyond what biology has been known to produce naturally at any scale (steel, carbon nanotubes, etc.), then you could probably push it farther, but there's still a point at which the wing cannot support the stresses that come with flapping and will tear itself apart. – Palarran Mar 02 '19 at 14:28
  • @John "Witton and Habib (2010) predicted that the hard flapping window for a giant azhdarchid was about 90 seconds, after which a rest was needed. So, does that limit our giants to turkey-like burst flights?" – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 14:29
  • @Palarran I never intended to go too far, partly because large size and advanced firearms don't mix well. – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 14:31
  • 180cm is not that big an animal, quetzalcoatl is 550cm at the shoulder. Also Witton and Habib's methodology is pretty flawed, especially how they come up with the mass of the flight muscles. Plus that is the recovery time between launches, not how long they can fly for, basically they can't land and take off multiple times in rapid succession. Soaring animals can rest flight muscles in flight, that is one of the advantages. – John Mar 02 '19 at 14:36
  • @John 550, that's how tall they are (at the head) pic – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 14:39
  • Sorry yes, 250cm is the shoulder. Also if you put them in a more upright bird like stance you end up with an even smaller dragon.so giving height at the shoulder is not the best measure. a 500kg bear and a 70kg human have similar heights at the shoulder, height at the shoulder is helpful only if you already know the animals proportions. – John Mar 02 '19 at 14:46
  • @John Roughly the same as for a horse, at least the body. – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 14:59
  • So you are looking at around 12% of body mass per terrestrial limbs, but wings are something close to 16-20%, but of course you are putting all that on the same animal, so you are coming up on 80% of the animals mass in its limbs, Yeah scaling is a bitch, You really do need ot make all the muscles lighter...You need make the bones hollow too – John Mar 02 '19 at 15:22

2 Answers2

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Addding more muscle is like the rocketequation. More muscle means more weight means more muslce required to lift it which in turn needs more bone to hold it and more fat, bloodvessles and blood to power it...

I'd go for making it lighter, and what I recommend everyone until it's promise starts to fail is Graphene based objects. Carbon Nanotubes (CNT's) or 3D Graphene (https://newatlas.com/3d-graphene/47304/) could both be used. CNT's would mostly fulfill a role in strenghening the material it's embedded in meaning you need less, while 3D Graphene is much lighter than steel but 10X stronger. With the sponge-like structure shown it would also allow for lots of biological stuff to run through it or simply be filled with pockets of air or other gasses. This could lighten your Dragon a lot without losing strength, meaning its muscle power can get him airborne and also be used for wrecking stuff.

Since this is all made from Carbon, one of the most abundant materials our bodies are made from, it gives you an opening for some plausibility of a Dragon, insofar a Dragon is plausible.

Additional advantages: less weight means less energy and muscles required, so less heat generation and less oxygen to burn through.

Demigan
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  • Could a living creature even produce graphene? I know they can make extremely sophisticated structures, but... – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 06:01
  • @Mephistopheles the first "produced" Graphene was with scotch tape and some carbon, and then looking through what stuck till you found some Graphene. Evolutionary this is likely impossible to create in a useful quantity and method to enclose it safely where you want, but it might be biologically possible. Just like CNF's are likely not evolutionary possible for non-plants (from my quick read) but not impossible biologically to create. – Demigan Mar 02 '19 at 07:09
  • I just wanted to ask, what's activation energy? – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 07:33
  • @Mephistopheles Do you mean the minimum energy required for chemical reactions to start or something on a larger biological scale? If the first, well there you go and if the second please elaborate. – Demigan Mar 02 '19 at 07:43
  • The first, it might be helpful. – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 07:48
  • What do you think? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120321152554.htm – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 13:22
  • I think that it shows that the terminal phase of Graphene production is possible through biological means. Unfortunately Graphene Oxide seems an unnatural product (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_oxide). PS: "Graphite (Graphene) oxide (GO) has also been prepared by using a "bottom-up" synthesis method (Tang-Lau method) in which the sole source is glucose, the process is safer, simpler, and more environmentally friendly compared to traditionally “top-down” method"." If it can be produced from Glucose it is likely a biological creature could do the entire process. – Demigan Mar 02 '19 at 16:08
  • It requires a strong oxidizer, can't we use stomach acid? – Mephistopheles Mar 02 '19 at 16:14
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Is this concept for an LTA-gas' associated element lifecycle feasible?

there has been some discussion of Using other means to provide lift. Some birds are able to fly better due to air pockets in their bones. or you could use something similar to the idea given in the link i just shared. A gas so light that it provides incredible lift. A gas like this could reside inside the dragon, it could live out its whole life cycle in pockets in the bone. maybe the dragon could have control of it. the gas starts as a solid, providing no change in density. but the dragon has the ability to consciously turn this solid into the gas and expelling normally dense air, filling the space with this almost negatively dense gas when it wishes to fly. just food for thought. for a little more information about this LAL-gas contact the Inquirer of the shared question or refer to another question asked by them later on.

What ways are there to keep a steady altitude with large fluctuations regarding load?

Elias Rowan Albatross
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