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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!elsie!imsvax!ted
From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: gliding against the wind
Message-ID: <425@imsvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Oct-85 23:17:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: imsvax.425
Posted: Wed Oct  9 23:17:05 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Oct-85 08:32:07 EDT
Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD
Lines: 27


At least one reader has misunderstood one of my statements regarding the
posssibility of a living creature using gliding as a primary means of
transportation.  I have never stated that gliding against the wind was
impossible, ASSUMING YOU HAVE ALTITUDE TO BEGIN WITH.  In the case of 
Quetzelcoatlus Northropi, however, we are talking about something different.
For this creature to have survived as a glider, assuming the whole notion
wasn't preposterous in the first place, which it is, and also assuming it
had some magical way of getting airborne from low ground, which it didn't, it  
still had one insurmountable problem remaining:  getting home.  It would have  
had to land on low areas for the carrion which by all accounts constituted its
diet.  Then, assuming it was a glider, and assuming also it had a magical way
of getting airborne, it could not have glided home against the wind, STARTING
FROM SEA-LEVEL.

In reality, of course, nothing lives as a glider.  There are two models for 
the life-style and flying characteristics of the Texas Pterosaur, a 300 lb.
flying creature of the archaic world:

a.  In our world, in our gravity, after the first 1/2 second of flight, during
which its long wing bones would snap from the stress, the correct model would
be an ordinary red brick dropped over the edge of a high building.

b.  In the archaic world, with its lesser gravity, the correct model would be
a vulture-like creature which mostly glided and sought free rides in thermal
currents and winds, YET NONETHELESS HAD THE POWER TO TAKE OFF FROM LOW GROUND
AND TO GET BACK HOME AGAINST THE WIND IF IT ABSOLUTELY HAD TO.