Re:Why we don’t understand heavier-than-air flight
by Anarch157a on Saturday June 26, 2021 @12:16PM
(#27643150)
Kelly Johnson caused a stir in the engineering community when he came up with the F104 Starfighter, with it's thin and almost flat wings.
Re:Why we don’t understand heavier-than-air flight
by Retric on Saturday June 26, 2021 @12:43PM
(#27643405)
Yea, start throwing around enough thrust and you can fly just about anything. The F-15 got to the point where one wing was optional: https://theaviationist.com/2014/09/15/f-15-lands-with-one-wi...
Wings need to support the weight of your aircraft while being light this means they need to be reasonably thick especially using the obvious choice of storing fuel inside them. The first obvious choice is a teardrop shape which gets lift from being angled up similarly to the way a flat wing does.
Real wings don’t quite use a teardrop shape, but if you look at the front most part of a wing you see it curves both down and up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_attack#/media/File:Ai...