HOW "ROUTINE" IS FLYING?

Take a moment to think about the process of flying home at Christmas. Millions of people casually walk into aluminum tubes, tie themselves down, and let themselves be hurtled down a concrete ramp at over 180 mph, with a highway , cliff or deep water coming up at the end of it. They sit a few feet from burning kerosene and hundreds of sharp blades spinning at 1500 feet per second; placed right below huge tanks filled with thousands of gallons of volatile kerosene fuel. The aluminum tube then shoots upwards, and flies at up to 600 miles per hour (that’s a mile every six seconds!), 7 miles above the ground, for hours. At that speed, humans would be smashed to pulp if exposed directly to the oncoming airstream, which is merciful because one would die freezing (its minus 50 ° F up there!) or gasping for air in the time it takes to fall down to lower altitudes where there is enough air to breathe. We fly through violent thunderstorms, and land in rain or snow. We get impatient if the plane is a bit late, or if our meal on board is not warm, or if the flight is "rough". And then this tube finds its way precisely to a point on a concrete field at our destination, descending though night or clouds, and, still moving at 150 to 170 mph, touches down with less of a bump than we feel driving over a speed-breaker.

The picture above is part of the Clip Art provided with Deneba Canvas 5.0

Aerospace engineers figured out every step of the above process, and agonized over everything that could go wrong. They calculated everything using the science that they learned at school, and tested their designs, and measured and verified everything. Then they kept improving their designs, many times, before the first aircraft was ever built. This is why it is so safe to fly: nothing is left to chance or "luck", and AEs don’t cut corners or accept sloppy work.

In this course, we will go through a simple version of the flight vehicle design process. We will see how a set of "Mission Specifications" is used to develop a preliminary aircraft design, step by step, through logical reasoning and application of science, mathematics, common human sense and care. You can reduce the design to something which you can draw, and whose performance you can calculate approximately. In the process, we will also glimpse the various disciplines of aerospace engineering.

Have fun. Please read the text, and try out the calculations and derivations by yourselves.