Quote:
Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary
Maybe. But I don't think it's significant. An airplane at a low level of attack can have a Cd as low as 0.02, or maybe even lower. At a very high level of attack that can go up to 0.18 or 0.20 or so. But even then the overall Cd is lower than the great majority of road going vehicles.
Ironically, the faster you go the more it might make sense to add wings, with or without following a road.
Or maybe we all should be driving airplanes that have modified to apply the power to the wheels.
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Intuitively, this is tough for me. If you're displacing air in order to provide an upward force on the vehicle, my intuition says that energy is lost. But, it's been proven many times that what is intuitive often isn't reality.