Re:The Case for Making Humans Smaller
by modeless on Sunday November 15, 2015 @12:47AM
(#10568640)
Being very small would have other fun advantages. You'd have a much higher strength to weight ratio than today's humans, for both your muscles and bones. You'd probably be able to jump your own height or even more. Falls would be much less damaging. Not just everyday falls, but you might be able to survive falling at terminal velocity, as cats can, thus allowing you to fall from any height. Even wilder, it might be possible to fly under your own power with an appropriate wingsuit. Certainly personal helicopters and/or jetpacks would be possible.
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http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....:
In the present study, the effects of pure isometric scaling on vertical jumping performance were investigated using a biologically realistic model of the human musculoskeletal system. The input of the model, muscle stimulation over time, was optimized using jump height as criterion. It was found that when the human model was miniaturized to the size of a mouse lemur, with a mass of about one-thousandth that of a human, jump height dropped from 40 cm to only 6 cm, mainly because of the force-velocity relationship. In reality, mouse lemurs achieve jump heights of about 33 cm
Disadvantages include moving down the foodchain. I live in an inner suburb of a city, and I see foxes in my street. At my current height, they're a curio - but at 50cm tall, they're a viable threat.