Best part of Legion Lore: The flight ring

If there is one thing that has stood the test of time with Legion, it's the flight rin, one of the most recognizable elements that makes it's way into random comics and TV appearances.  It's first appearance was Adventure #329 in 1965.  I often have a problem how being the times the Legion in in it's depictions of future tech.  This one holds up.

What I mean by this is how we in the real world experience growth and innovation in technology and it starts to catch up to science fiction sooner than we realize.  (see also Star Trek).  It's always been a challenge with the Legion as you aren't going a couple of hundred years in the future but a full 1000 years.  I don't think we can begin to guess what technology will be like then, if we're all still here.  This is further compounded how in comic books,  have Faster-than-light technology in the present day but we don't have it now.

So I've never read anything about why the flight rings were created but I think we can agree it was probably inspired by the Green Lantern rings, with their abilities of flight, environmental protection, universal translation, star maps, etc.  The Guardian's tech is pretty old and presumably a well guarded secret.  I've always believed the reason that GL rings seek a new wearer is to keep the ring from being captured and the secrets being revealed.  Presumably by the 30th/31st century, some of the flight rings capabilities mirror a GL ring.

Brainiac 5 was historically the creator of the ring, allowing Legionnaires to ditch their cumbersome flight belts.  The Reboot gave some credit to Lyle Norg for helping with the innovation of the design.

So what does a flight ring do?
1.  Flight, obviously.  This is one of the things I enjoyed about the Legion, everyone could fly.  The flight ring was sophisticated enough that if its user was knocked unconscious, the ring could sense the change in brain activity and put the wearing in a levitation pattern so they don't fall to their death.
2.  Communications.  Flight rings obviously work on some type of subspace communication principle, allowing real time voice communication with others.
3.  Distress signal/Homing beacon.  This is sort of an odd one because it seems redundant. Generally, if you are calling for backup, you might want to specify whom they send.  I guess there are situations where one may not be able to talk and can only muster twisting the L on their ring to summon help.  The downside to this is it does become a plot point to overcome at times.
4.  Light generation. Because sometimes you just need a flashlight.
5.  Some mental protection, though this can be an exploited.
6.  Great feats of moving objects.  We've seen flight rings do more, from levitating objects (making Light Lass even more worthless) to being placed on an enemy to cause them to fly off into a cave wall or something.  Overuse of this could cause problems plot-wise.
7.  Security lock.  One needed a flight ring to pilot cruiser, though apparently not to enter the HQ. Though with advances in biometric authentication, this could also be a redundant or antiquated feature.
8.  Environmental protection.  In the Threeboot, this was granted via flight ring as opposed to a separate transuit.  Any integration of the two techs could be natural though.
9.  Enhanced strength.  See below:

The above art is taken from the Threeboot period.  

What are a flight ring's limitations? 
This is a tough one.  A lot of what is stated above is part of the known properties of Nth metal, such as the enhanced healing and strength.  Since Valorium is an Nth metal alloy and not pure, I'm not sure that all the properties of Nth metal should be present.  Presumably the Hawks are exceptions with the whole reincarnation and repeated exposure origins.

Speed has been portrayed as having a limit by a restrictor that keeps the wearer from going too fast and causing injury, also noted above.  This was shown primarily with Ultra Boy but how he uses superspeed and flight is a mess to figure out.  I don't like this idea though. For XS, she could run faster than she could fly with a flight ring. A flight ring should have a maximum speed regardless. Even at 100 mph, an invulnerable Ultra Boy will still do some major damage as a projectile. 

This also speaks to depictions where Legionnaires are doing interstellar travel without a space ship.  How?  I recall this specifically in Earthwar so I'm going to blame Levitz for it.  He also seems to think Legionnaires can fly across the planet Earth in no time.  The Gs of acceleration and deceleration a body would have to withstand do not make this feasible, Nth metal/Valorium or not.  Even at Mach 10, it would take them an hour to get there from Metropolis. Also, how would they navigate these distances flying over ocean and land? As my proof, there was a scene in volume 6 where Colossal Boy, Phantom Girl and Shadow Lass were trying to police a cruiser that had went astray somewhere in the Himalayas. That's an area of  420,000 square miles or over 1 million km² to cover.  I really don't like the idea of a user simply commanding the flight ring to home in something and to take them there with the best possible route.   Before I digress with a bunch of other problems with this little bit of story, I'll simply say that flight rings can't replace space ships and other shuttles and the functions they serve.

So that's it.  I think there just needs to be a bit of tightening up on flight ring capabilities and remember a little bit of high school physics (Google is our friend) and we can keep flight rings as a permanent fixture in the Legion stories.