The fudge point in his reasoning: "The animal machine is far more effective than any we can hope to make."
Exactly what does effective mean?
We still can't make ornithopters that approach the performance of birds. That is what his analysis actually shows. Our successful aircraft still don't have performance that resembles that of birds. Then again, no birds cruise at an altitude of 30,000 feet at nearly Mach 1. Our aircraft don't have to be bird-like to be economically useful, and this is indeed effective to us.
So to go back to my other comment that predictions should involve economic analysis: our professor should have considered flight performance envelopes that would be commercially useful, not flight performance envelopes that resemble those of birds. (For example, he could have extrapolated something like the performance envelope of a balloon, but with twice the speed and better directional control.) If he had considered a few examples of those, he'd have quickly realized that using birds as a model wasn't a good idea for an analysis of human flight technology.
Exactly what does effective mean?
We still can't make ornithopters that approach the performance of birds. That is what his analysis actually shows. Our successful aircraft still don't have performance that resembles that of birds. Then again, no birds cruise at an altitude of 30,000 feet at nearly Mach 1. Our aircraft don't have to be bird-like to be economically useful, and this is indeed effective to us.
So to go back to my other comment that predictions should involve economic analysis: our professor should have considered flight performance envelopes that would be commercially useful, not flight performance envelopes that resemble those of birds. (For example, he could have extrapolated something like the performance envelope of a balloon, but with twice the speed and better directional control.) If he had considered a few examples of those, he'd have quickly realized that using birds as a model wasn't a good idea for an analysis of human flight technology.