Game of Thrones Season 7 Discussion [SPOILERS WITHIN]

[pocaracas]

Now who's the nerd?

Nitpicking... dragons exist?

Um... clearly if you buy into the premise of the show then dragons exist.



This is an argument about whether they can fly.

Well, duh! If dragons exist, then they can fly. Flying comes with the definition of being a dragon!
Even the old Chinese wingless dragons can fly - e.g. Falkor from The Neverending Story.

The question is... how much can a decaying gaping wound hinder said flying ability, given that the dragons on this show require wings to fly? Air is then something that will affect them.

We can build some pretty heavy flying machines with much smaller wing to body ratios than those dragons....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-5...tofortress
- 160,000kg?! O.o (360,000 pounds)
- plus 32,000 kg of weapons!?! (70,000 pounds)

I wouldn't have a problem with those beast being able to actually fly...
http://tabletopwhale.com/img/posts/09-29-14.gif

Taking off, however... never a vertical ascent. I like it that they sometimes just plunge off a cliff on the show... at least that may give them enough boost for the wings to start working!... or just to glide.

You're seriously putting up a fixed-wing plane as your evidence that dragons would be able to fly?

It's not a fair comparison, is it? Poor airplanes can't compare to birds in terms of fuel economy and maneuverability... nor in taking off.
But some birds do require some forward velocity to help propel them into the air. They can't just take off vertically. Just like I don't think these dragons could.

The problem isn't just in the weight, it's also in the biomechanics of how the wing muscles could get that weight into the air and keep it up there through flapping, since the dragons aren't gliders.

Yes they are gliders!
Look here at the start of the clip, a dragon gliding:


Also, don't forget that they are very very warm inside, providing a bit of extra buoyancy in air.... hot air goes up.

HAHA... look at this thing that I found!
http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/c...hey-could/
"Disregarding the possibility of magic, this tells us that the atmosphere of Westeros must be far more dense than ours. [...] Watching a few episodes of Game of Thrones you’ll notice that pretty much anybody can pick up a spear or sword and throw it distances that an Olympic javelin thrower would be deeply envious of. Given that gravity seems to be roughly similar to ours, this suggests the thrown weapons are generating much more lift than on Earth – consistent with an atmosphere of higher density. "

Also, taking a bit more serious approach:
https://sites.google.com/site/anthonysgu...on-physics
"So, we have a candidate system for building a dragon. There are a wide variety of problems making these dragons biologically highly improbable, but they don't seem to be totally impossible.
[...]
Like all flying creatures, dragons will be rather weight sensitive, and so their skins, while possibly quite tough, will not be thick. A pierced dragon will tend to produce air rather than blood, though the requirements of using them as muscles mean they will have valves that can cut off air flow quite quickly."

(hehehe, this is fun)

(of course it is... memory loss isn't though)