Eli5: why are some airplane jet engines under the wings and some on the vertical stabilizer?
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The biggest benefit that I remember from my design classes of having the engines on the tail is the reduction of adverse yaw. When you design planes, you have to design them in a way that if things break they don’t crash. So planes need to be designed to be able to fly with only 1 engine. If the engines are on the wings, they are further from the center of gravity, and they’ll make a bigger moment (or twisting force) on the plane. This makes it harder for the rudder to overcome, so you’ll need a larger rudder and a more powerful actuator to control the rudder, which is more heavy. If the engines are on the tale this is less of an effect and you can design a smaller rudder and actuator (not exactly an apples to oranges comparison as you’ll need to increase the structural parts of the tail to account for the engines). On top of this, it looks cool, which is a surprisingly big factor in aircraft design, especially for business jets. There are a few other benefits, for example less issues with tailwash from the engines wake and a few other things, but you get the gist.
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