How did Smaug (or any other firedrake) produce their flames?

[James the Just]

A fire breathing human, such as a circus performer, will burn about 500 calories of fuel to produce a large fireball. Does that help?

 

[Eljorahir]

A fire breathing human, such as a circus performer, will burn about 500 calories of fuel to produce a large fireball. Does that help?

It helps very much if we want to construct a problem for a physics 101 textbook. How about?:

A dragon's fire-breathing ability utilizes gasoline combustion. If a typical dragon's fireblast is 1000 times the heat intensity of a fire-breathing circus performer (at 500 calories per blast) how many pounds of gasoline would a dragon consume per blast? And, if the fully-fueled dragon had the capacity for 100 blasts, what volume of internal "fuel tank" would be required?

Now, all we need is a Physics 101 student to answer.

 

[Olorgando]

A fire breathing human, such as a circus performer, will burn about 500 calories of fuel to produce a large fireball. Does that help?

"Fire-breathing" is definitely a misnomer, if it is supposed to mean exhaling and inhaling. Any artist who were to accidentally inhale during the performance will certainly only do so once ... 😱
But there's still the issue of fuel. The relevant artists usually carry it with them in a bottle - probably with a quick-seal top - and take a swig from it, keeping it in their mouths (so the fuel had better be non-poisonous!) until they spit / exhale to produce the fireball. Smaug, presented as a quadruped with the front limbs being the wings, as they are / were for birds, bats and flying "dinosaurs" (give PJ credit for getting that right - four-legged reptiles which additionally had a pair of wings never existed) - well, folding in one wing to take a sip from whatever external container would be sure to seriously mess up aerodynamics! 😬
Leaves an internal container for the fuel. Sure, there are tanker planes for in-air refueling, but they and the planes being refueled are moving at speeds several times higher than the v-max conceivable for any dragon ever imagined.

 

[Amon Rudh]

There are similar comparables in nature, just out of the other end. I suppose given sufficient evolutionary pressure and time, a fire from the mouth version could eventually emerge.

 

[Olorgando]

There are similar comparables in nature, just out of the other end. I suppose given sufficient evolutionary pressure and time, a fire from the mouth version could eventually emerge.

I doubt that. There's probably a good reason for keeping that kind of stuff away from the end where the brain, a lot of sensory organs and the food-intake is located. 🥶

 

[James the Just]

It helps very much if we want to construct a problem for a physics 101 textbook. How about?:

A dragon's fire-breathing ability utilizes gasoline combustion. If a typical dragon's fireblast is 1000 times the heat intensity of a fire-breathing circus performer (at 500 calories per blast) how many pounds of gasoline would a dragon consume per blast? And, if the fully-fueled dragon had the capacity for 100 blasts, what volume of internal "fuel tank" would be required?

Now, all we need is a Physics 101 student to answer.

The dragon would need a fuel tank of 1,724 gallons. Maybe 100 blasts is too many.

"Fire-breathing" is definitely a misnomer, if it is supposed to mean exhaling and inhaling. Any artist who were to accidentally inhale during the performance will certainly only do so once ... 😱
But there's still the issue of fuel. The relevant artists usually carry it with them in a bottle - probably with a quick-seal top - and take a swig from it, keeping it in their mouths (so the fuel had better be non-poisonous!) until they spit / exhale to produce the fireball. Smaug, presented as a quadruped with the front limbs being the wings, as they are / were for birds, bats and flying "dinosaurs" (give PJ credit for getting that right - four-legged reptiles which additionally had a pair of wings never existed) - well, folding in one wing to take a sip from whatever external container would be sure to seriously mess up aerodynamics! 😬
Leaves an internal container for the fuel. Sure, there are tanker planes for in-air refueling, but they and the planes being refueled are moving at speeds several times higher than the v-max conceivable for any dragon ever imagined.

Breathing doesn't necessarily entail both both inhaling and exhaling. A person's last breath is only an exhale. That's when their 'spirit' leaves them, according to many traditions.
A boat plane can refuel without traveling fast. Why couldn't a dragon?

 

[Eljorahir]

I doubt that. There's probably a good reason for keeping that kind of stuff away from the end where the brain, a lot of sensory organs and the food-intake is located.

Tell that to this trooper on Planet P.

The dragon would need a fuel tank of 1,724 gallons. Maybe 100 blasts is too many.

Cool. I was hoping someone would step up and do the math. Yep, that tank is too big. We either have to lower the performance specs for our dragon design or maybe switch to another fuel (I think liquid hydrogen is the best, 50,000 BTU's per pound if memory serves.)

 

[Amon Rudh]

I doubt that. There's probably a good reason for keeping that kind of stuff away from the end where the brain, a lot of sensory organs and the food-intake is located. 🥶

And yet dragons don't 😉

 

[James the Just]

Cool. I was hoping someone would step up and do the math. Yep, that tank is too big. We either have to lower the performance specs for our dragon design or maybe switch to another fuel (I think liquid hydrogen is the best, 50,000 BTU's per pound if memory serves.)

Liquid hydrogen??? You do realize how cold that must be kept, right?

 

[Olorgando]

A boat plane can refuel without traveling fast. Why couldn't a dragon?

Do you mean the flying boats respectively "amphibians", the latter also able to take off and land on land, which are used in aerial firefighting? The one I'm most familiar with is the (originally) Consolidated PBY Catalina, an amphibian. Those planes which refill their water tanks (not refuel) have wing configurations like the STOL aircraft (Short Take-Off and Landing), which allow for low take-off and landing speeds.
I thought of such a refueling method in my OP:

https://thetolkien.forum/threads/ho...edrake-produce-their-flames.30789/post-568692

but my question remains: where't that fuel lake Smaug would need for "refueling"? 🤔

 

[James the Just]

And yet dragons don't 😉

Alcohol is used for fire-breathing. That's kept not only near the mouth and brain but is drank by silly humans.

 

[Olorgando]

Tell that to this trooper on Planet P.
View attachment 24973

Nah, but I'd be telling the director that an insect that big would not be able to move - period. There's just no escaping the fact of size increase: volume and mass increase to the third power (or cubed), while area - cross-section of muscles, bones, whatever - only increases to the power of two (or squared). I have a DVD of PJ's "King Kong". No question, nice graphics - except that huge lunk would also be practically immobile.
And don't get me started on "Godzilla"! 🙄

Alcohol is used for fire-breathing. That's kept not only near the mouth and brain but is drank by silly humans.

Yep, and there's this Italian liqueur called Sambuca, with a minimum alcohol content of 38% by volume (this would be 76 proof), which is served most often with three coffee beans, and "may be ignited to toast the coffee beans with the flame extinguished immediately before drinking. Very good idea, that last statement. I certainly wasn't going to set my mustache on fire! 🥵

 

[Amon Rudh]

Just checking we all remember this is made up stuff? 🤣🤣

 

[Aldarion]

Nah, but I'd be telling the director that an insect that big would not be able to move - period. There's just no escaping the fact of size increase: volume and mass increase to the third power (or cubed), while area - cross-section of muscles, bones, whatever - only increases to the power of two (or squared). I have a DVD of PJ's "King Kong". No question, nice graphics - except that huge lunk would also be practically immobile.
And don't get me started on "Godzilla"! 🙄

Godzilla is actually one of more realistic giant monsters... small upper body, tree trunk legs and so on. So while physically impossible, as a general design for giant creature, it actually works.

Unless you mean Fakezilla from that 1998 comedy...

 

[Olorgando]

Just checking we all remember this is made up stuff? 🤣🤣

Sure. But JRRT was a perhaps unrivaled master at making his invented world believable - at least that part that does not require the often-quoted suspension of disbelief. That 1950's treatment - for a proposed animated film - had the Fellowship hopping from place to place with "Eagle Airlines". Then there's a comment by JRRT in some letter where he criticizes Celtic mythology for its "fundamental unreason" - or words to that effect. Not that the Norse mythology he preferred - including the linguistically alien Finnish one - was much better. He didn't just cut'n'paste from his sources - he transformed them (that mould of the mind).
So asking "is this not unreasonable" seems to me to be a valid approach to JRRT's writings - where suspension of disbelief is not needed.

 

[Wastrel]

Smaug and the other dragons are Maiar who followed Morgoth, just as the Balrogs are. In the Silmarillion it is said that Glaurung was able to speak "by the evil spirit within him" if I remember the phrase correctly. Morgoth must have bred and modified lizards or other reptiles to serve as containers for these spirits. They are immortal, as Balrogs are, unless they are killed. If you remember, there are different kinds of dragons; the first ones did not have the ability to fly. Morgoth must have also bred the ability to create fire into them. The Moria Balrog also had fire as a weapon; after he fell his fire was quenched, and after Gandalf pursued him to the top of the Endless Stair and out on the mountainside, he burst into flame again. So, the fire does not need fuel; it is created supernaturally and is part of their being.

 

[Olorgando]

Smaug and the other dragons are Maiar

JRRT never clarified what dragons "were" in the way he did for Balrogs. Hints, yes, explicit statements, no. And he rarely described what I would term "conventional magic" so common in generic fantasy. Just think of the difference between Gandalf's laconic statement at the Council of Elrond that Saruman was able to imprison him compared to that ridiculous scene in PJ's film - a freakin' WWE cage match, or what? Or that who or what caused the snowstorm on Caradhras is never explained in the book, while PJ feels the pathetic need to attribute it to Saruman - not Sauron, as the Fellowship speculates in the book. JRRT's ambivalence about the term "magic" is well-documented - even within "Fellowship", where Galadriel questions Sam's use of the term, it being too often used for "the deceits of the Enemy". So I would be cautious about using conventional, generic terms of "magic" or the "supernatural", much of it derived from post-LotR fantasy, to JRRT's own published writings.

 

[Ent]

Meh. I struggle with the business of Dragons being Maiar. "Non sequitur - does not compute."

The Dragons were among the 'monsters' "bred" by Morgoth. Their lives were long, and their growth was slow. the flyers and fire breathers were both offshoots of the earler great worms were earthbound. Morgoth simply worked out perversions.

BUT - the worms all had a 'beginning', a birth, followed by very slow growth. Their 'breeding' and 'growing' was very much NOT of the Maia... who were created 'full grown' if you will, and with all the power they would ever have (unless later enhanced by Eru himself, such as Gandalf.)

This is not to say a Maia might not have 'inhabited' a Dragon, much like the 'spirits from afar' came to dwell within the Trees/Ents/Huorns.

But just as not all Trees were inhabited by a Maia, so not all Dragons would have been... like the trees, their origin was 'of the earth, earthy' so to speak.

So far for myself, I've not heard anything compelling me to change the perspective I've built to date.. The weight of evidence tips the scales to abused creatures, just as much as Orcs are tipped toward abused Elves etc.

As to how they exhaled fire, well... Morgoth just had the Orcs grow lots of beans to feed them with. We do not have to have a massive 'gas tank' as they generate their own gas internally as needed. Nothing like a few spoonfuls of bean to prove that fact.

 

[CirdanLinweilin]

Godzilla is actually one of more realistic giant monsters... small upper body, tree trunk legs and so on. So while physically impossible, as a general design for giant creature, it actually works.

Unless you mean Fakezilla from that 1998 comedy...

Anyone remember how incredibly massive Ancalagon the Black was supposed to be? I imagine him as an absolutely colossal behemoth.


CL

 

[Aldarion]

Anyone remember how incredibly massive Ancalagon the Black was supposed to be? I imagine him as an absolutely colossal behemoth.


CL

I don't think we have any indication on Ancalagon's size.

After all, Balrog destroyed a mountain top despite being troll-sized at most.