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Comment by meindnoch | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine the efficiency that makes such long flights possible in such a tiny form factor. Compared to our drones, it must be multiple orders of magnitude more efficient.

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Not sure whether is a matter of efficiency. Efficiency is more about the desired outcome. Insects are small and very low weight. So I would assume wind will give them more push and can carry them for much longer distances even without doing anything on their own. But the price is a lack of control; they have probably little to no influence where they will end up.

Indeed - and let's not forget that these are the ones that successfully landed somewhere - many many others will have landed in the sea, or otherwise died before they could reach a suitable spot.

The ones that landed here hadn't aimed for or planned to find the rig, they were just in the same physical location and found a space to land.

A few years ago in the Mediterranean I observed what initially seemed like an oil spill. Taking a closer look, it turned out to be millions of tiny dead insects. I guess sometimes they do land in the sea?

At the time, I tried to find information about it online, and all I found was an article about it happening on the other side of the Atlantic several years earlier.

There’s a reason most insects have thousands of offspring. Wikipedia states that houseflies have about 5k. Since their population isn’t exponentially exploding, you can assume the chance of reproducing as a fly is something like 1/5000

The text version of the 'airplane with bullet holes' meme lol

I'm kind of keen to see if large electric cargo motor gliders might one day become a thing. Traversing great distances via ambient energy harvesting. Maybe even self landing at certain designated airfields to top up on energy and avoid bad weather.

A migration of the machines so to say.

Ultra-long endurance drones and balloons for remote sensing are a thing, but this kind of approach doesn't scale well to higher cargo payloads.

Most of the stratospheric approaches I've seen aren't so much about exploiting low altitude weather phenomenon but rather flying above it. Which of course is exactly what you want for long term remote sensing.

I'm thinking systems that mostly exploit thermals and updrafts, engaging in a kind of bird like automated soaring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-zvzOC8dzA

If you look at the nearest survivor to flying insects' ancestors - the springtails - it seems that's been part of their strategy for a very long time. With controlled flight being a much later addition to the basic "getthehellouttahere" reflex.

>they have probably little to no influence where they will end up

sounds like they need to organize into political parties, strength in numbers

They go high too.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/06/01/128389587/l...

It helps to be extremely lightweight and small - the smaller you get, the less effort you need to put into just staying aloft.

The smaller you are, the less energy you can store.

Efficiency is a maximization of these ratios.

What happens when we start making drones that small, I wonder.

It's called smart dust. Check Sci-Fi bookshelves.

“Flies Aren’t Real”

Haven’t you noticed fewer birds than you saw when you were younger?

Not to mention they're much more influenced by wind currents.

I suspect that they operate similar to hot air balloons. Land when the wind is going the wrong direction and then maintain altitude when it's going the right direction.

Thermals and wind.

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