Airplanes

     A little while ago I wrote about trains.  Well now I would like to discuss another mode of transportation, and that is Airplanes.

      The greatest thing about flight, is the speed at which you travel at.  On conventional roads, there are speed limits and there are obstacles that need to be avoided.  But not in the sky, there are no obstacles and this means unlimited speed, at least relatively speaking.  What this means is that people can go wherever they want with the freedom to do so in a timely manner.  In an around the world trip that once took people years to complete can now be done in just a few short days.  This is thanks in part to 2 things.  Cabin pressurization and the modern engine of an airplane.  What pressurization did was to allow planes to travel at higher altitudes while maintaining a safe near sea level pressure within the plane itself.  The modern family of airplane engines allow for great efficiency along with capabilities of greater speeds, thus increasing the distances being able to be traveled.  

      There are things within flight that we have grown to pursue as well, the most exciting and well known of these pursuits being the pursuit of speed.  The fastest manned take off and landing capable airplane is the SR-71 Blackbird.  This airplane is capable of hitting speeds of mach 3.5 or 3.5 times the speed of sound.  That puts it at about 2,200 mph with some rough calculating.  And that is just the declassified top speed.  This 40 year old airplane's top speed could still very well be and could always be classified.  The fastest thing to ever fly however, was the Bell X-15 a      Ever since the first flight back in 1903 by the Wright Brothers, the world has been able to fulfill it's many millenniums old desire for flight.  Since then things have come a long way.  From the first flight lasting only 59 seconds, we have now produced airplanes that fly at the reaches of the earth's atmosphere and can travel from New York to Los Angeles in under an hour.  The list of accomplishments man has achieved with flight is one of the longest lists of anything in this world.

ircraft.  It was mounted to the wing of a B-52 for takeoff, and once the desired altitude was reached, it was deployed.  The top speed was over mach 6.72 or 4,520 miles per hour.  This is a video courtesy of You Tube that discusses the X-15 more in depth.   https://youtu.be/TFcCx4uR6rk

      The future is very bright for flight, and I am very excited to see what is in store for the next generation of pilots and passengers of flight.