How would a bird's flight change entering the zero gravity axis of an O'neil cylinder?
This question on space stack begins to tackle how a bird could fly inside an O'Neill cylinder, https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/27665/can-birds-fly-inside-an-oneill-cylinder.
Here is the video mentioned in the question of birds attempting to fly in zero G https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4sZ3qe6PiI&feature=youtu.be
The video shows that they can fly in zero gravity, although they seem quite disorientated.
As the above answer points out the birds should fly as normal from take off from the ground where artificial gravity from the spin of the cylinder will take affect like gravity on earth, flying with or against the spin will have interesting effects causing the bird to either dive or hover, but it is the bird flying directly through the zero gravity central axis or along the axis that I am interested in for this question.
How would their flight change as they enter the central zero gravity axis area? and assuming they had lived inside the habitat for some time and had gotten used to the environment. Would they have trouble in this area and avoid it, would they dive through it with their momentum from earlier, could they even take advantage of the area somehow?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/169221. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
How would their flight change as they enter the central zero gravity axis area?
Once they're accustomed to it, I expect they'd flap their wings less often, since they don't need the lift to stay in the air.
Would they have trouble in this area and avoid it?
Assuming there is air up there, I expect they'd be fine. Most likely "flight" in the region (again, once they figure out what they're doing) would be more like penguins swimming. Like in the video, they probably won't maintain a particular orientation. (Again, I believe this is already the case for penguins.)
Would they dive through it with their momentum from earlier?
Would they need to? I don't see any reason why, unless the air is really thin. (If it is, they would probably avoid the center, treating it as 'too high to fly'.)
Could they even take advantage of the area somehow?
Yes! In fact (again, if there is air), I can't imagine that they wouldn't take advantage of a space where they don't need to exert themselves much to stay aloft. Terrestrial birds already do this with updrafts ("thermals").
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