[null and void]

Do you know how the little winglets got on the ends of commercial jets?

Pretty hard to improve on a billion years of adaptation.

BTW, my dad worked in ground support of those fighter jets. it takes a large ground crew, a massive supply chain, a good machine shop and a repair facility to keep them in the air for a fraction of the time.

Birds, not so much.

[dhs12345]

Adaption to what? The earth based ecosystem? Very specialized with a lot of overhead.

Early flying machines tried to mimic the flapping of a bird wing. Innovation and science came up with a much better solution.

What is the top speed for a bird? 100mph? A fighter jet can do many times that. If speed is the goal, the fighter jet has the bird beat.

Bottom line: depends on your goal. Nix the overhead of an ecosystem.

There are other factors to be considered too. Can a human survive outside of an ecosystem.