I’m wondering what the historical/political/military ramifications would’ve been had Leonardo Da Vinci successfully created and operated his flying machine, especially if he taught others to create similar machines. What would the map of Europe or even the world look like today? Would the space program be years ahead of today’s space program considering the earlier development of flight?
I doooo… believe you may be on an all night flight yourself.
or maybe Iam.
Damnit!
I doubt if Leo’s success would have had any effect on space exploration. I doubt if it would’ve even had much success beyond the small basic wood-and-fabric bird-like flyer he developed in the first place. Why not? Even ignoring the inherent limitations of his ornithopter design… Materials technology.
No internal combustion engine. No aluminum. No electricity, much less hydroelectric power (aluminum processing requires huge amounts of electricity; before the advent of hydroelectric dams, aluminum was more valuable by weight than platinum). And space exloration pretty much had to wait until solid-state electronics were developed. The space program was a confluence of many technologies, and while some might have been pulled along by the necessity of other technologies, other crucial ones might not have been.
What Orca said, plus:
How would da Vinci’s flying machine be powered? Even today with space-age materials human-powered ultralights can’t fly much further than about 25 miles. That unicopter wouldn’t go too far on whale oil or peat or any other fuel source widely available in the 15th century.
You have a point there – I remember seeing an item on either CNN or Discovery News a few months back about someone building (and successfully testing) one of daVinci’s parachute designs using modern materials.
The problem with Da Vinci’s machines is the lack of any practical power source, other than a mainspring or being pulled/pushed by draft animals. Until such a thing came along, his ideas were mere curiousities.
Interestingly enough, Marvel Comics did an issue like this in their “What If” series.
The “What If” question was “What if Sarg. Rock had fought WWII in Outer Space?” To bring this about, they had Da Vinci and his contemporaries perfect his machines and explore the world hundreds of years ahead of our own timeline.
Therefore, on Dec 7th, 1941, on the space station “Pearl Harbor” the BEMs attack.
Hey, this is a comic book, it could happen! 
I don’t think we’re reading the OP, folks. He specifically said, “what if”, not, “was da Vinci’s flying machine possible?”, or “would it be possible to make the leap directly from primitive flying technology to space exploration”.
We read the OP just fine. I just concentrated on the half of his OP that asked about the advancement of space exploration. Given that most aeronautics-criticial technologies didn’t come to pass for at least three or four more centuries, we’re saying that the success of DaVinci’s ornithopter would probably have had little to no effect on space exploration.
That success would certainly have had effects in other fields, though. Even if aeronautics were limited to human-powered ornithopters, they could have played significant roles in war. The OP asked about the far more complex European theatre and I’m not about to tackle that. The example I thought of was confined to the American experience:
Scout planes at Gettysburg.
The battle began as an accidental meeting between a Northern patrol and Southerners looking for shoes. As the armies converged, Lee was effectively blind, hampered by an early absence of (IIRC) Jeb Stuart’s cavalry, which was supposed to be doing recon duty. Scout planes could’ve done either of two things:
- Allowed them to bypass Union forces and given them passage to Washington, whereupon the Union would’ve sued for peace.
- Failing that, the South might’ve seen the early advantage and destroyed the Union force piecemeal. Then on to Washington.
BUT the Union, having its own air capability, probably would’ve forced a terrible war of attrition along the entire Mason-Dixon line much earlier than Gettysburg. It would’ve still been a Union victory, but at a far higher cost. Maybe too high a cost. The U.S., out of sheer exhaustion, might have remained split.
England would have had an eager trading partner and ally in the South. The Union and South likely would have competed for decades over settlement and control of the western expansion. Divided like that, would we still eventually have become a world power?