I flew for the first time on a plane last week and I’ve seen planes take off at the airport. It looks crazy. But being on one is totally different like holy shit. The thing just FLIES. It just… Soars… Through the sky! Like whoa man. Wtf… It’s crazy. With how much these things weigh, it’s insane to me the thing can just go up and bam, there we are, we’re flying now. Like wow… Dude crazy.

  • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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    9 days ago

    My first experience in an airplane was quite different actually. In my mind as a child an airplane was this amazing thing that just flew, I had seen pictures of how it looked and thought it was a static thing that people sat in as it flew around.

    The reality was quite different, the thing was a bit scoffed up and looked used. I kept thinking how the seats look like the seats on a bus. Not dirty exactly, but used looking and the kind of material you don’t see stains too well and cleans easily. The noise was a lot to handle, not just the roar of the engines and the sound of the air going past, but all of the groins and creaks. And it wasn’t static at all, everything was shaking and moving around, panel gaps showing. I saw the wings go from hanging down to pointing up as the weight of the aircraft hung from the wings. In my mind metal was hard and shouldn’t move as much as it did. Getting on and off was just a ramp that was shoved near the plane from the gate, with a gap in between a flap was laid over. It looked nothing like the high-tech environment I imagined. And flying through the air wasn’t as I imagined, at those speeds it’s more like being under water than going through nothing as I imagined. The plane reacts to currents in the air, getting pushed to the sides and up and down, not the perfectly straight and stable ride I imagined.

    So in the end I decided a plane is very much like a bus and that makes sense as it does pretty much the same thing, carry a bunch people from a to b all of the time.

    The only thing that surprised me was at take off how much power the thing has. In a bus the engine is usually very underpowered, just enough to get up to speed in the most efficient way. With an airplane the power to weight ratio is crazy, it’s more like driving a really fast car than a bus. But other than at take off, it’s pretty much a bus.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      9 days ago

      In the air shows around here, they used to have a semi truck with some rockets strapped to the back that they’d race against a fighter jet.

      The jet would come in low and when it crossed the starting line, the truck would take off from it.

      The truck usually won.

      Air shows might be big oil and military propaganda (that truck was owned and sponsored by Shell, iirc)…but damn if it wasn’t cool as hell.

      • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        I went to my second monster truck show a couple years ago. Took my nephew with me. The first time I was a kid and we had to leave because the noise made my bitch ass little brother cry.

        They’ve come so far! They’re doing front flips now in those trucks! Highly recommend it for anyone. I was 39 at the time and I loved every minute.

    • Jarix@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Do you appreciate the company name Airbus because of this experience?

      I think I would.

      I think it would just make me smirk a little bit at myself whenever i remembered both of them at the same time