Good points, but the chimpazee's much larger gut would reduce its overall power to weight ratio, despite have to lug around slightly less brain matter.

It's hard to beat a human for this sort of sustained effort as they can be easily conditioned to preform ardurous labour no other ape would do through the use of a token system using small green pieces of paper.

And sometimes not even green! The Bipedal Ape is most truly a puzzle.

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A chimp could handle it physically, I'm sure, but how do you make it go consistently and in the right direction without stopping to figure out different ways to get at the banana you're dangling above its head?

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Half the mass and 6 times the strength? Umm... no.

Chimps are strong but do they have the endurance of a trained cyclist? All of the human powered aircraft that I know used cyclists for the pilot and powerplant. Paul McCready realized that a good cyclist can sustain over 0.4 horsepower for hours. He designed the Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross to require that amount of power. That allowed him designs to win the two Kramer Prizes.

Can a chimp do that?

I find very amusing that this thread and the one about whether a chimp can legally be a person are both on BAUT at the same time.

So, if a chimp could power an airplane, would they be considered a person?

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If the Chimp flew his plane to DC and walked into the capitol and demanded in English to be a person, maybe!

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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

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Yes, but the little dude didn't power the rocket or even the capsule, so I fail to see the relevance.
Of course one could always stop and go back for a new one every time a chimp tired, ala Marx Brothers.

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Chimps are stronger because of how their bodies are laid out, not because their muscles are stronger than ours. Leverage--mechanical advantage. You can lift any weight, if you have enough pulleys, but you're going to be pulling a lot of rope from a long time. Same way with chimps. We can move faster than they can, but we're not as strong because of it.

You'd have to gear the aircraft differently for them so they could even keep it in the air, with how much slower they are than us. Which would probably even it out to where they couldn't power an aircraft any better than we--assuming they have similar endurance.

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I doubt they would stay in a holding pattern at LAX. But on the flip side the airlines would save a lot on money on pay and benefits.

And if it crashed, they could blame it on the monkey pilot and be correct

(ape, I know, I know)

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From what i have been reading , we are built for running and throwing , and much less to wrestle or to lift weights.

Leverage alone can't account for the difference; we're not "designed" that differently from each other and generally have the same muscles attached at the equivalent places. Chimpanzees' muscles, or at least the ones in their arms, must also be able to muster more force per unit of muscle size, in order to get the difference that's been observed. (It's been suggested that they can consciously access some of the "reserve" strength that humans don't normally use except in dire emergencies or on PCP, but that would have its own drawbacks.) The real problem with the claim of how many times stronger than us they are is that it's based on exactly one kind of test (an arm pull of some sort, which is what you'd test if you were trying to bias it in the chimps' favor, given how they locomote in the trees), so even if that test was done in a valid way, it still says nothing about the results you'd get from other methods for testing and calculating "strength".

While they're six time stronger, it's only for very short durations. Their sustained caloric output per pound of body mass is actually less than that of a human. Furthermore, their legs are significantly weaker than their arms (reverse of we humans) so if it were even possible, they'd probably use arm pulls (their claim to fame, strengthwise) whereas for us, pedal power makes more sense.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. Human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

When I was in college, I weighed around 165 lbs, and I had a good deal greater pull strength than that! Heck, I used to lift the back end of my car and walk it around to get into parking spaces too small for parallel parking.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. Human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

That isn't a one handed pull though. That actually would be leg strength.

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That's a great idea. We need all the alternate energy sources we can get our hands on.

But won't the environmentalists throw a temper tantrum when I start burning monkeys in my Cessna?

Humans main physical specialty evolution wise is endurance, especially long distance running.
The lack of hair, sweat glands and subcutaneous fat layer are all parts of that adaption, as the first two allow for efficient cooling while the last makes for enough insulation to not cool down too much when inactive.
This makes us well adapted to the type of feat needed to power a plane, ie. very long sustained effort.

Chimps on the other hand is much more adapted to bust effort which means their peak strength is higher but can be sustained for much shorter.

With the fur and no sweating the chimp would die of heat exhaustion long before the human would begin to get in trouble.

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And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
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Even so, given the back end of my car, it still amounts to more tha 400 lbs per hand...

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. Human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

Personally, given a chance to go flying, I'd burn anything in sight, provided it would provide enough light for long enough duration until I greased the skids...

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. Human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.