A key element in humans being able to fly in When We Have Wings was engineered carbon fibre bones and muscles of greater explosive power. Seems like the science has caught up with me already.
From the article:
‘Baughman and his colleagues have produced a formulation that’s stronger than steel, as light as air and more flexible than rubber — a truly 21st century muscle. It could be used to make artificial limbs, “smart” skins, shape-changing structures, ultra-strong robots and — in the immediate future — highly-efficient solar cells.
“We can generate about 30 times the force per unit area of natural muscle,” said Baughman, director of the NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas.’