8 Scientific Theories That Totally Change Captain America: Civil War

3. Falcon

So Iron Man's suit generates a lot of heat using jet propulsion. Falcon appears to have partially overcome this by aiding his flight with bird-like wings.

As far as sci-fi goes, Falcon's flight is pretty on the mark. Although the wings would not enable him to fly like a bird without the flapping motions, they would perhaps slow his descent enough to make the jet packs viable. The setup is not that dissimilar to these skydivers who, whilst appearing to fly, are more likely to be in free fall that is slight arrested by their larger glider wings and propelled forwards by their jets.

The development of an ornithopter - a flying machine that moves like the wings of a bird - has been a dream of mankind ever since the time of the ancient Greeks but, despite having since invented multiple different methods of flight, we have still been largely unable to crack it.

Students at the University of Toronto had a go at one back in 2010. The effect was inexplicably slightly creepy and managed a flight time of 19.3 seconds.

Probably best to stick to the jets for now.