Heraldic Dragons

Heraldic dragons are the creations of a mad god, called Anon, designed after the classical six-limbed ones.

Measurements:

• Head+neck length: 180 cm
• Body length: 180 cm
• Height at shoulders: 180 cm
• Tail length: 280 cm
• Wingspan: 11 m
• Wing area: 22 m^2

Context of their creation

Anon was a maximalist and borderline sadomasochist, using cat for text-editing and such, and really wanted to make dragons the way he imagined. Since he was also immortal and had access to nanomachines, a quantum supercomputer, and considerable resources, only the laws of physics were meaningful obstacles.

Dragons are native to the setting of Neverwhere, a science-based and earth-like world.

Adaptation for flight

Dragons make extensive use of graphene in their bodies, as well as microscopic scale engineering, maximalizing their tissues' strength-weight ratio.

Flight appendages

The wings and flight muscles are located between the fore and hind limbs. They're almost completely anaerobic, just like the flight muscles of the Quetzalcoatlus northropi. However, the Quetzalcoatlus had a torso length of about 65 cm, so there should be enough space in a dragon to fit an extra pair of wings there. Instead of having the wings separate, however, they're connected to the same membrane and flap it synchronously.

Flight style

Due to the nature of anaerobic muscles, dragons only use them during a ~90-second climbout. After that, they switch to thermal soaring, with glide ratios of 11, it shouldn't be hard.

Since heraldic dragons have twice the wing area and anaerobic flight muscles of the Quetzalcoatlus, but the same wingspan, they should be able to attain masses of 400-500 kg, twice the upper-estimates of Quetzy.

But, I don't know if it could work out like that. So, would this tandem setup for the wings allow dragons to attain masses of 400-500 kg and still remain volant?

posted about 5 years ago

Mephistopheles‭

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