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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* We probably ought to have an example of one of those.
* A laminar wing by itself, cruising at 41,000-feet above sea level would be one thing.
* When the fuselage, horizontal and vertical stabilizers, gapped control surfaces and such are all added, Cd 0.02 would seem extremely liberal.
* The 1957 MG EX 181 race car had the same drag as the 1935 Douglas DC-3/ C-47 aircraft, Cd 0.12 ( one of the lowest drag aircraft ever reported [ for a non-laminar aircraft ]).
* Laminar aircraft can't exist in ground proximity.
* We'd have to be extremely specific.