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Patrick,
One of the things that I truly love about your column is the way you dissect the intricate minutiae of flight and translate it into a textual tapestry that the average layman can understand. Notwithstanding this talent you occasionally err- and in this case you have erred in a pretty significant way. I agree that making things intelligible to the common man frequently involves reducing them to their core essences. But I do not agree that making patently false or otherwise inaccurate statements is acceptable. To whit you wrote:
“Getting off the ground is a function of lift, thrust and acceleration, not weight per se.”
Ummmm. You know as well as I do that the four forces relevant to flight are lift, thrust, weight, and drag. Ignore any one of these at your peril!! Lift is the opposite of weight, and thrust is the opposite of drag. To state that getting off the ground is related to lift, but not to weight is a bit Rovian in its twisting of reality. Please forgive me for offering what I think you were trying to say:
“Getting off the ground is not simply a function of how heavy an airplane is. Rather it is a function of how much lift the wing needs to generate to overcome the weight of the airplane, and how quickly it can get to the airspeed which will allow it to generate that lift. As silly as it sounds: If you had enough thrust a 747 could take off in the distance of a football field!! The A380 has no issue with runway lengths primarily because it has enough thrust to accelerate it to a speed where its wing generates enough lift to allow it to use currently existing runways.
Make it understandable- you do this very well. But don’t change the basic laws of flight- those are immutable and as you probably know- highly unforgiving!! (As apparently am I!!)
Cheers,
dce
