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.
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