While I was learning to fly one of my friend's dads had a Bellanca Decathlon.
It was an incredible little aircraft with a symmetrical wing, tail wheel, and good visibility.
It had a strong motor and it was very light weight, the performance was excellent in every regard.
It had an inverted fuel system and with that is symmetrical wing it was great for aerobatics, especially for learning.
You can fly it upside down, right side up, and everything in between.
The aircraft had a decent angle of attack, so when you are flying upside down you had to leave the nose high if you wished to maintain altitude, almost as if you were hanging onto prop.
Once you had set it up you could fly that way until the inverted fuel system ran out of its limits.
My friend's dad eventually added a small kit allowing it to fly inverted for a very long period of time.
This was a very fun aircraft to fly, and I learned a lot about aerobatics.
I just wished I was able to fly that particular type of aircraft more in my younger days.
Now then, it seems to me that if that aircraft had a shape shifting wing or shape shifting control services its performance could be significantly enhanced, adding to its true airspeed in normal flight.
There are some folks who are working on internal mechanisms to vary the camber on the leading-edge of the wing of an aircraft.
While I do believe those are interesting concepts, it seems as if it is too much mechanism for the interior structure of the wing, and I'd prefer to see completely different shape shifting materials, using material memory strategies.
Indeed, as long as we were doing that we should have shape shifting control surfaces as well.
Rather than having ailerons, elevators, rudders, and flaps the wing should completely change shape as needed, or one particular wing at a time.
This would allow for very incredible roll rates, greater stability, and incredible acrobatic performance.
The rear of the aircraft in this case should also be shape shifting, and that probably wouldn't be that hard once we figured out the materials for the wings.
Rather than having a rudder the entire aircraft would reshape itself as it propelled in the relative wind and slip stream - just as birds do.
Although there are research and development projects going on right now with shape shifting materials and control services, the big advantage will be when this technology hits general aviation and commercial aviation.
It will change everything, make aircraft more efficient, and prevent accidents.
In the future our aircraft may fly like birds.
Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.