It's crazy that a 60 ton metal airplane can just fly

Wait until you find out about electricity! 🤯

I hate that everybody's like, it's not that big a deal.

We only started doing it 124 years ago! Prior to that it was a very big deal indeed.

Everyone's so fucking smart these days, there's no room for a sense of wonder. It's like being blasé and knowledgeable is cool. It's really not.

You keep flying with your beautiful sense of wonder, Buttflapper!

I used to think so until I realised that air and water are both fluids, except air is thinner.

it works because we believe in it. if everyone would lose faith in airplanes, they'd drop out of the sky.

Don't forget how high you get.

I know right.... the wings dont even flap!

It's simple. You just need 60 tons of lift and thrust. Aerodynamics help but you can make a brick fly.

"It's just always exciting! That amazing moment when twelve tonnes of metal leaves the earth... and no-one knows why!"

"Yes, we do."

"Yeah, but, you know, not really. I mean, we know you need wings, and engines, and a sticky-up bit on the end for some reason, but it's not like we actually know why a plane stays in the air."

"No. No, Arthur, we really do! We- we do, we do know that!"

I find it equally neat how displacement allows a 100,000 ton ship to float.

As I'm sure most know, planes fly because of the angle of their wings and airframe shape (also known as an airfoil). As moving air flows over the wing it creates downward pressure, which, as a result of Newton's 3rd law (reaction to a force), allows moving air below to create lift. And upsy daisy she goes.

Science.

You think that's crazy? The ship that blocked the Suez Canal, the Ever Given, has a ship displacement (how much water is displaced when it sits in the ocean) of 265,000 Tons.

That's 240 million kilograms.

And that shit just floats on fucking water maaaaan...

An a380 is so big when it takes off it looks like it's moving slow, just kind of hanging in the air

Glitch that's going to be patched out eventually

"I flew for my first time on a plane"

Now I just feel old.

I'm even more impressed by aircraft carriers. Just one of those things weigh as much as 250 fully loaded Boeing 747s. And it just floats. :)

The 777 is 375-ish tons, and the A380 is 630-ish tons.

Consider the amount of air its wings must displace in order to stay aloft. An equal quantity of mass at least. It's passing through that air and, partly pushing it down, but also partially scraping it thin over the bowed top surface of the wing (the Bernoulli principle) which creates a pressure differential that lifts the wing, pulling it upward through suction, and thus the plane. That's why the plane must go fast to fly, and why it "stalls" and falls if it isn't moving through enough air. It's also how turbulence affects a plane. Differences in air pressure mean that in pockets of low pressure there isn't as much mass being displaced by the wings, not enough lift so it falls.

Now, it's quite likely that my layman's comprehension of this is flawed. But I'm sure it's entirely possible that someone will correct me soon :3

Crazier still when you consider it's pushed into the sky by its own farts.

I'm a mechanical engineer and have a general understanding of how wings work. I've flown many times. That shit still feels like magic to me.

Turns out, the sky is pretty thick if you hit it hard enough.

it's crazy that you can just jump, and you go up for a bit.

It’s magical, right? It’s what got me interested in aviation - the physics, the science, the engineering to make it work. And we’ve gotten so good at it, air travel is now available to most people, it’s safe and convenient.

I’ve flown exactly three times in my life: a hot air balloon, a helicopter and a DC3. Each was magical in its own way. I’ve also done a fair bit of plane spotting. Seeing an Airbus A380 landing right in front of you is amazing. It really is the size of a large apartment block with wings. Truly awe inspiring.

Aviation is fucking awesome!

I still look up whenever u hear a plane fly over. Heavier than air travel is treated way to casually

Airplane engines have deceptively high thrust, imagine each one as a rocket and it'll start to make sense. The a380 (the big double decker) each engine produces around 350KN. When that thrust is applied to an 80kg human they'll experience almost 450Gs of force

In an extreme sense, imagine putting a little rocket engine on a paper airplane which will represent a high thrust to weight ratio

Crazier to think 60tons of air being pushed down 10m/s^2 (or whatever equivalent mass/acc you want to think with) to keep it up there.

I think you just experienced physics first hand!

It doesn't just fly, it rages against gravity, using every possible trick in the book

boy do I agree.

I fly a lot, and I think about this a lot. it's absolutely nuts.

I saw a diagram once explaining how planes fly, this is a good explanation of that:

"Airplane wings are shaped to make air move faster over the top of the wing. When air moves faster, the pressure of the air decreases. So the pressure on the top of the wing is less than the pressure on the bottom of the wing. The difference in pressure creates a force on the wing that lifts the wing up into the air."

so that's floating around the back of my mind while I sit in my air chair and think:

"and there we are.

We are climbing into the air again in the big flexible metal tube.

The wings have flex and they almost look like they are flapping in the wind right there.

well, this is crazy again"

approximates my thought process each time I fly.

More cool detail about a modern jet airliner than you thought imaginable all delivered in a cool 3D animation.

https://youtu.be/NZLbTuBDhJg

The wings are crazy ! They look way too flimsy for what they do.

Next time you see an airplane, imagine a crane picking it up by the wings, around the middle of the wing length, and then start shaking it up.

It does not look like the wing will be able to hold that much weight.

I am a avgeek (aviation) and I love all things planes. Got my PPL and made it halfway through instrument before bailing but damn it, flying is the best thing in the world and aviation itself is absolutely fucking beautiful.

Due to the nature of my work I've flown hundreds of passenger flights of all sizes and I still find myself in awe.

What a privilege to be able to actually see down from such a range of heights too. Where there is still lots of detail to be found, but you can also get an appreciation of scale. It's honestly really amazing.

Wait till you discover about the concorde!

that and about 223,378 pounds of jet fuel then it flies

https://www.globalair.com/aircraft-for-sale/specifications?specid=1699

My first experience in an airplane was quite different actually. In my mind as a child an airplane was this amazing thing that just flew, I had seen pictures of how it looked and thought it was a static thing that people sat in as it flew around.

The reality was quite different, the thing was a bit scoffed up and looked used. I kept thinking how the seats look like the seats on a bus. Not dirty exactly, but used looking and the kind of material you don't see stains too well and cleans easily. The noise was a lot to handle, not just the roar of the engines and the sound of the air going past, but all of the groins and creaks. And it wasn't static at all, everything was shaking and moving around, panel gaps showing. I saw the wings go from hanging down to pointing up as the weight of the aircraft hung from the wings. In my mind metal was hard and shouldn't move as much as it did. Getting on and off was just a ramp that was shoved near the plane from the gate, with a gap in between a flap was laid over. It looked nothing like the high-tech environment I imagined. And flying through the air wasn't as I imagined, at those speeds it's more like being under water than going through nothing as I imagined. The plane reacts to currents in the air, getting pushed to the sides and up and down, not the perfectly straight and stable ride I imagined.

So in the end I decided a plane is very much like a bus and that makes sense as it does pretty much the same thing, carry a bunch people from a to b all of the time.

The only thing that surprised me was at take off how much power the thing has. In a bus the engine is usually very underpowered, just enough to get up to speed in the most efficient way. With an airplane the power to weight ratio is crazy, it's more like driving a really fast car than a bus. But other than at take off, it's pretty much a bus.

Wait until you find out how far off you are at 60 ton....

In fitting natural conditions your house can fly too, just not whole and not for long

I mean, it's crazy, but I'm more fascinated with smaller airplanes. Imagine it, you can make something like a Piper Cub almost as easy\hard as 1000 years ago it was to make a good hauberk.

And for those mentioning computers - my feeling is the same about computers. It's nice to have a laptop with Linux or FreeBSD (not counting corporate malware), but a machine much simpler, but one that can be produced entirely in an area of 10mln people, full chain, would be much cooler for me.

I'm in awe of distributed production lines being possible and allowed by today's machinery.

I think that is something we have to rediscover. Centralization is stifling humanity's advancement. At the same time in the real world rather unpleasant people's power depends on it, so it won't be quick or easy. But I think it is happening anyway, just very slowly. Evolution, not revolution. Surely I would be glad for it to be a revolution, to see it as a (yet) young person.