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The dragon's weight can be reduced, by a mixture of lighter than air gases, heated air, vacuums etc.

I have done some research, but I forgot the equation, this was for a 6000 kg bird, how large does its wings have to be? Well, around 14.5m x 7m, could you help me? Thanks.

edit, this is in an earthlike enviroment, no magic as such, I would like physics, chemistry and math, if you can, and the wing size can also be divided by two more wings, as that was on a 2 wing bird, and this is in a four winged creature

thank you for your help

Dexyan
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    Is it 14.5 x 7 meters? This seems silly, but in physics, units are quite important ;). – Tortliena - inactive Dec 19 '20 at 22:55
  • Did you try searching here for questions about dragons flying? For example https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/819/what-is-the-maximum-size-of-a-flying-creature – Seallussus Dec 20 '20 at 00:44
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    How thick is the atmosphere? If its wing muscles are strong enough, it could probably fly around on Venus – Henry Taylor Dec 20 '20 at 04:42
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    Does the term "like a lead balloon" have any meaning for you? – jamesqf Dec 21 '20 at 03:53
  • there are no vertebrates with four lift generating wings. 4 wings would just get in each others way and add a lot of useless weight. the largest creature to ever fly weighed at most 300kg. this is going to make science based not really possible. – John Dec 21 '20 at 07:01
  • Very important question to read, https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/819/what-is-the-maximum-size-of-a-flying-creature?noredirect=1&lq=1 – John Dec 21 '20 at 07:05
  • weight can be reduuced by some quantity to reach the max, by using hydrogen+heating it up, in scales, and in buoyancy sacs, the weight can be reduced, also, the wings would not get in the way of each other, as they are bigger at the front, smaller at the back, and at a suficient distance appart, they could also help with steering, and the having 2 sets, makes it easier to actually move the wings – Dexyan Dec 22 '20 at 11:29
  • @John that’s not really true...while there are no proper four winged vertebrates in this planet’s history (which is debatable, if you consider microraptor and the like), there’s no reason why such a creature couldn’t exist. I imagine it would fly somewhat like a plesiosaur would have swam; alternating flaps with the front and back wings such that the back wings use the currents produced by the front wings. – Globin347 Dec 31 '20 at 03:22
  • @Globin347 microraptor does not have four wings it has two wings and rudders, its hip anatomy make it impossible to lift the legs high enough to generate lift either passively or actively. the main reason it cant evolve is four wings limit a flier to smaller flight surfaces (wings) AND require a much larger body, so for flight it has no net gain. a flight stroke takes up a lot of space so the only way to get two wings is to have a lot of body to move the wings far enough apart. plesiosaurs only work because they don't need to generate lift. – John Dec 31 '20 at 04:36
  • the body is alongated, so the wings are apart, the secondary wings are smaller, and the two first would be more for lift, while the other two would be used for gliding, as well as to have a better steering, or more like butterflies, which also have four wings – Dexyan Dec 31 '20 at 13:45

2 Answers2

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I am not very hopeful about 6750 kilogram (14,881 pound) heavier than air flying creatures on a planet like Earth.

See my answer to the question:

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96644/plausibility-of-floating-whales/191717#191717[1]

For a discussion of the heaviest possible flying creatures on Earth.

My answer here:

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/191008/would-a-small-low-gravity-moon-be-able-to-harbor-complex-life/191115#191115[2]

Discusses designing a world with a lower surface gravity and much denser atmosphere than Earth. That would help larger creatures to fly, but there are limits to have far it can be taken and remain plausible.

SurpriseDog
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M. A. Golding
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Well, that's going to be a BIG problem.

Mass

The largest creature that has ever flown was about 250 kg. Now, while your creature is double its weight, a 250 kg pterosaur still had people questioning the limitations of biological flight.

Indeed, burst-flight performance seems not to intrinsically degrade with increasing size.

So, let's talk wings

While aerodynamically efficient, an albatross's monstrous wings would have tremendous inertial costs when it comes to flapping during take-off. Keep in mind that flapping is an oscillatory motion, unlike the rotation of helicopter blades, or the forward motion of a fixed-wing aircraft.

Thanks to how rotation works, a wing with a length of 5 meters can achieve the same speed at a much lower angular velocity, compared to a shorter wing. Large fliers thus tend to have lower flapping amplitudes.

What you must keep high is the flapping frequency, i.e: how many times does the dragon beat its wings in a given unit of time.

So, high frequency, low-amplitude, this is where another important element comes up:

Square-Cube Law

Muscles scale allometrically, they get extra thick but remain short, which comes at the expense of the range of motion. There's a fixed value of absolute shortening the flight muscles have to achieve to move the wing around, depending on the flapping amplitude, once that's met, they can be as thick as necessary.

There's even more to it, but I'm too tired to add it in right now.

Mephistopheles
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  • thank you for your answer, the creature is now 300 kg, but has weight reducing vacuums, although i still am searching for a solution with the hydrogen seeping in, and so the weight is actually 250 kg – Dexyan Jan 14 '21 at 18:33