FaceGlobalWarming.com

Eons ago, Zork stood outside his cave and watched a vulture spread his wings and soar off a cliff. Zork decided to try this himself. Too late, he realized that his lift to drag ratio was about zero - no lift and lots of drag - and he had the glide ratio of a brick. Zork’s decedents gave up on aviation for 50,000 years.

Since humans first looked up at birds in flight, we have been trying to fly like them, often with painful or even fatal consequences. Even with the technology available today, we are just beginning to be able to apply some of the technology that has existed in birds for, oh, 150 million years, such as variable geometry wings, vectored thrust, and fly-by-wire.