On 03/14/2014 12:25 PM, Jim Bronson wrote:
You can't make something fly just by making it light. While weight is
certainly a critical parameter in determining performance as stated in
payload/range and speed, no airplane needs to be "light enough to
fly". It needs to have enough lift from it's wings to overcome
whatever weight it is trying to fly with, and enough thrust to propel
the aircraft to a forward speed high enough where the wings produce
the required lift, while overcoming aerodynamic drag.
You're in Seattle, just look down the road to Everett where they build
the 777 and 747. The max gross takeoff weight of a 747-8, the current
production model, is nearly 1 million pounds. The max gross takeoff
weight of the heaviest current 777 model, the 777-300ER, is 766,000lbs.
Someone mentioned the U-2 earlier. While a beautiful and graceful
aircraft, the wing characteristics and the altitude it flies at cause
it to have a very nasty "coffin corner" where the speeds available at
cruise between mach buffet (overspeed) and stall speed are very
small. It's a good plane to look at but it's quite tricky to fly.
"Good" and "easy to fly" are not synonyms. The U2 has been in service
since 1957 and is in service today. Can there be better evidence that
it's good at its job?
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