Categories:

• Earth and the Environment
  • Atmosphere and Weather
  • Biographies
  • Ecology and Environmentalism
  • Geography
  • Geology and Oceanography
  • Minerals, Mining, and Metallurgy
• History
  • Ancient Greece and Rome
  • Asia and Africa
  • Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific
  • Biographies
  • Historians and Chronicles
  • Latin America and the Caribbean
  • Modern Europe
  • United States and Canada
• Literature and the Arts
  • Art and Architecture
  • Biographies
  • Classical Literature, Mythology, and Folklore
  • Fashion, Design, and Crafts
  • Journalism and Publishing
  • Language, Linguistics, and Literary Terms
  • Literature in English
  • Literature in Other Modern Languages
  • Performing Arts
  • Scholars and Historians
• Medicine
  • Anatomy and Physiology
  • Biographies
  • Diseases and Conditions
  • Divisions, Diagnostics, and Procedures
  • Drugs
  • Psychology
• People
  • History
  • Literature and the Arts
  • Medicine
  • Philosophy and Religion
  • Science and Technology
  • Social Sciences and the Law
  • Sports and Games
• Philosophy and Religion
  • Ancient Religions
  • Biographies
  • Christianity
  • Eastern Religions
  • Islam
  • Judaism
  • Other Religious Beliefs and General Terms
  • Philosophy
  • The Bible
• Places
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Australia and Oceania
  • Britain, Ireland, France, and the Low Countries
  • Commonwealth of Independent States and the Baltic Nations
  • Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe
  • Latin America and the Caribbean
  • Oceans, Continents, and Polar Regions
  • Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and the Balkans
  • United States and Canada
• Plants and Animals
  • Agriculture and Horticulture
  • Animals
  • Biographies
  • Botany
  • Microbes, Algae, and Fungi
  • Plants
  • Zoology and Veterinary Medicine
• Science and Technology
  • Astronomy and Space Exploration
  • Biochemistry
  • Biographies
  • Biology and Genetics
  • Chemistry
  • Computers and Electrical Engineering
  • Mathematics
  • Physics
  • Technology
• Social Sciences and the Law
  • Anthropology and Archaeology
  • Biographies
  • Economics, Business, and Labor
  • Education
  • Law
  • Political Science and Government
  • Sociology and Social Reform
• Sports and Everyday Life
  • Biographies
  • Crafts and Household Items
  • Days and Holidays
  • Fashion and Clothing
  • Food and Drink
  • Games
  • Manners and Customs
  • Social Organizations
  • Sports

Documents for "Aviation: General":

• aerial and satellite photography technology and science of taking still or moving-picture photographs from a camera mounted on a balloon, airplane, satellite, rocket, or spacecraft. In the 19th cent., photographers such as...

• aerodynamics study of gases in motion. As the principal application of aerodynamics is the design of aircraft, air is the gas with which the science is most concerned. Although aerodynamics is primarily...

• aeronautical engineering see engineering.

• aeronautics see aerodynamics ; airplane ; aviation.

• aileron see airfoil ; airplane.

• air cargo see aviation.

• air traffic control the system by which airplanes are safely routed into and out of major airports. Air traffic control in the United States is centered in a number of regional control centers that route airplanes...

• air transportation see aviation.

• airfoil surface designed to develop a desired force by reaction with a fluid, especially air, that is flowing across the surface. For example, the fixed wing surfaces of an airplane produce lift, which...

• airplane   aeroplane, or aircraft, heavier-than-air vehicle, mechanically driven and fitted with fixed wings that support it in flight through the dynamic action of the air.

• airport or airfield, place for landing and departure of aircraft, usually with facilities for housing and maintaining planes and for receiving and discharging passengers and cargo. There are about 16,000 airports in...

• airship an aircraft that consists of a cigar-shaped gas bag, or envelope, filled with a lighter-than-air gas to provide lift, a propulsion system, a steering mechanism, and a gondola accommodating...

• amphibian in aviation: see seaplane.

• autogiro or gyroplane , type of aircraft supported in the air by a horizontally mounted airfoil similar to that of a helicopter but unpowered. Invented by the Spaniard Juan de la Cierva, it was first flown successfully...

• aviation operation of heavier-than-air aircraft and related activities. Aviation can be conveniently divided into military aviation, air transport, and general aviation. Military aviation includes all...

• aviation medicine scientific study of the biological effects of aviation, especially on human beings. Although aviation medicine is concerned with such problems as the spread of diseases by persons traveling by air...

• balloon lighter-than-air craft without a propulsion system, lifted by inflation of one or more containers with a gas lighter than air or with heated air. During flight, altitude may be gained by discarding...

• biplane aircraft, typically of early design, having two sets of wings fixed at different levels, especially in a vertical stack with the fuselage included between them. See airplane.

• blimp see airship.

• control surface see airfoil.

• convertiplane see vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.

• dirigible or dirigible balloon: see airship.

• drone or remotely piloted vehicle, a pilotless craft guided by remote control. Aircraft, ships, and land vehicles can be designed or outfitted as drones, although underwater vessels—both piloted and pilotless—are usually called submersibles. Small, relatively inexpensive military drones are used as targets in combat practice, while high-performance models may be used in hazardous reconnaissance missions and to carry and launch...

• elevator in aviation: see airplane.

• empennage see airplane.

• flight sustained, self-powered motion through the air, as accomplished by an animal, aircraft, or rocket.

• flight simulator device providing a controlled environment in which a flight trainee can experience conditions approximating those of actual flight. A simulator generally consists of an enclosure housing a working...

• floatplane see seaplane.

• flying boat see seaplane.

• flying saucer see unidentified flying objects.

• fuselage see airplane.

• GEM see air-cushion vehicle.

• glider type of aircraft resembling an airplane but having at most a small auxiliary propulsion plant and usually no means of propulsion at all. The typical modern glider has very slender wings and a...

• gyroplane see autogiro.

• hang glider see glider.

• helicopter type of aircraft in which lift is obtained by means of one or more power-driven horizontal propellers called rotors. When the rotor of a helicopter turns it produces reaction torque which tends to...

• heliport airport designed exclusively for helicopter traffic.

• Hindenburg see airship.

• hypersonic speed see aerodynamics.

• jet engine see jet propulsion.

• jet propulsion propulsion of a body by a force developed in reaction to the ejection of a high-speed jet of gas.

• kite in aviation, aircraft restrained by a towline and deriving its lift from the aerodynamic action of the wind flowing across it. Commonly the kite consists of a light framework upon which paper,...

• Mach number [for E. Mach ], ratio between the speed of an object and the speed of sound in the medium in which the object is traveling. An airplane that has the velocity of Mach 3.0 is traveling at three times the speed of...

• monoplane see airplane.

• nacelle see airplane.

• ornithopter see flight.

• parachute umbrellalike device designed to retard the descent of a falling body by creating drag as it passes through the air. The development of modern aircraft has led to many experiments in the aerodynamic...

• pitch in aviation: see airplane ; airfoil.

• pod in aviation: see airplane.

• ramjet see jet propulsion.

• roll in aviation: see airfoil.

• runway see airport.

• sailplane see glider.

• scramjet see jet propulsion.

• seaplane airplane designed to take off from and alight on water. The two most common types are the floatplane, whose fuselage is supported by struts attached to two or more pontoon floats, and the flying...

• shock wave wave formed of a zone of extremely high pressure within a fluid, especially the atmosphere, that propagates through the fluid at a speed in excess of the speed of sound. A shock wave is caused by...

• short takeoff and landing aircraft (STOL), heavier-than-air craft, capable of rising from and descending to the ground with only a short length of runway, but incapable of doing so vertically. The precise definition of an STOL...

• soaring see flight ; glider.

• sonic boom shock wave produced by an object moving through the air at supersonic speed, i.e., faster than the speed of sound. Since sound is a mechanical disturbance that propagates through the air, there is a limit to...

• sound barrier see aerodynamics.

• spoiler see airplane.

• SST see airplane.

• stabilizer see airplane.

• STOL aircraft see short takeoff and landing aircraft.

• supersonic speed see aerodynamics.

• supersonic transport see airplane.

• tail assembly see airplane.

• taxiway see airport.

• tilt-rotor aircraft see vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.

• UFO see unidentified flying objects.

• unidentified flying object or UFO, an object or light reportedly seen in the sky whose appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behavior do not readily suggest a logical, conventional explanation. Some of these...

• vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (VTOL), craft capable of rising and descending vertically from and to the ground, thus requiring no runway. While a balloon or an airship has obvious VTOL capability, both are very inefficient at moving parallel to the earth's surface. The autogiro and the helicopter offer some improvement in this respect, but still have very limited performance. A large number of VTOL designs have been produced and tried. The pogo-stick, or tail-sitting, type was similar in...

• visual flight regulations see air navigation.

• Voyager the first airplane to circumnavigate the earth nonstop on a single load of fuel. Designed by Burt Rutan and flown by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, Voyager took off from California on Dec. 14, 1986, and, after a 25,012 mi (40,269 km) flight, landed in the same place nine days later. The plane weighed only 1,858 lb (845 kg) without fuel but needed a...

• VTOL aircraft see vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.

• wind tunnel apparatus for studying the interaction between a solid body and an airstream. A wind tunnel simulates the conditions of an aircraft in flight by causing a high-speed stream of air to flow past a...

• wing see airfoil ; airplane ; flight.

• yaw in aviation: see airplane ; airfoil.