Why can’t airplanes fly into space?
In: Engineering
The lift the wings produce is generated by the air. The pressure of the airdrop with altitude so at high enough altitude there is simply not air to provide lift. Airplanes, in general, used oxygen from the air to burn the fuel so the engine cant work at that altitude.
That said if you have rocket engines onboard you can use them at any altitude because you carry both the fuel and oxygen so aircraft like the North American X-15 have reached an altitude that is considered space but not an orbit around earth. You alos added part like small rocket thruster to turn it at high altitude.
Depending on how you look at it the space shuttle might be considered as an aircraft.
A vehicle that can fly like an aircraft in earth atmosphere but maneuver like a space ship in the vacuum of space is called a spaceplane. The Space Shuttle, Sovjet “copy” Buran, and the unmanned US X-37 are spaceplanes.
They all use the external expandable rocker to get to space because we have not managed to create something that car reach orbit without stains, You drop off the part to reduce weight for tanks, engines, and boosters that are no longer needed.
In theory, you could build a vehicle that starts like an aircraft at the ground. Fly like an aircraft to high altitude and then start to use rocket engines to space. It can return back like the space shuttle. The problem is that is not weighted efficient and no one has managed to create something that can do that.
To give a slightly stupid answer. There’s no air in space. So airplanes won’t work there.
I know I said stupid, but it’s actually just true.
Airplanes use air to propel themselves forward. Use air to create lift.
Neither of these is possible in space. So they’d be pretty useless there.
Rockets get thrust in a different way, and don’t “fly” like airplanes do. (Space shuttle being the weird crossover that did a bit of both)
Depending on the plane in question, that would be doable – there have been a few rocket planes invented. *However,* most modern and historical planes use the air itself for both lift and propulsion. With no air, there is nothing for the propellers / jet engines to use to invoke Newton’s 3rd law of equal and opposite reactions (push something in one direction and you get pushed in the other) for thrust, and neither is there any air going over the wings to generate lift. Similarly, if there is no air going over the various control surfaces (ailerons on the wings, or elevators and rudder in the tail), the plane has no way of controlling which direction it moves – sticking your hand out of car window and feeling it be pushed around by the wind suddenly doesn’t work if there is no air to do the pushing
Airplanes are designed to burn fuel using the oxygen in the atmosphere, and generate lift pushing up the wings
Spacecraft carry their own oxidizer and fuel, and therefore don’t need atmospheric oxygen to operate. And because drag is far greater at lower altitudes, most rocket launches start on a vertical trajectory.
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