No Stupid Questions

2174 readers

1 users here now

There is no such thing as a Stupid Question!

Don't be embarrassed of your curiosity; everyone has questions that they may feel uncomfortable asking certain people, so this place gives you a nice area not to be judged about asking it. Everyone here is willing to help.

ex. How do I change oil
ex. How to tie shoes
ex. Can you cry underwater?

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca still apply!

Thanks for reading all of this, even if you didn't read all of this, and your eye started somewhere else, have a watermelon slice 🍉.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Why can't all planes fly straight up? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm not great at physics and have no knowledge of aeronautics, so this whole chain of reasoning might be wrong.

A plane stays in the air because air is moving over the wings, which generates lift. However, that air is moving because the engine is moving the plane forward. There is no other source of energy. Therefore, some of the engine's energy is going into keeping the plane in the air, and some is going into accelerating it forwards, or keeping it at the same speed (fighting air resistance).

Therefore, if the plane points straight up, the engine should be able to support it hovering in the air. If it didn't have enough power to fight gravity when pointing straight up, it wouldn't have enough power to fight gravity when moving horizontally, either.

(Okay, some older engines only worked in certain orientations, but I don't think that's a problem for jet aircraft, or any aircraft built after WWII.)

So why can only certain planes fly vertically?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Beautifully put ... an ELI5 that my five year old like brain can understand