Why can’t we fly planes into space? (2024)

FAQs

Why can’t we fly planes into space? ›

And then, there's the issue of the plane's engine. Commercial airplane engines are unable to generate enough thrust to propel a craft through the atmosphere and into space, which requires approximately 7.2 million pounds of thrust. For comparison, the Boeing 747's engine generates around 63,000 pounds of thrust.

The higher you go, the less air there is, so as airplanes go higher and higher, they need to go faster and faster to stay aloft. Additionally, the jet engines of airplanes actually work by sucking air through them. All of this means that for almost all airplanes, space flight is impossible.

Spaceplanes are aircraft that can both fly as airplanes in the earth's atmosphere and use rocket propulsion to fly in outer space. While spaceplanes are reusable like other spacecraft, what makes them unique is their ability to land on runways designed for airplanes.

In 1967, the "Outer Space Treaty" dictated that all nations in compliance with international regulation are permitted to exploit space. As a result, the commercial use of space is open to exploitation by public and private entities, especially in relation to mining and space tourism.

Star Wars would have you believe that the greatest challenges to space travel is asteroids, lack of resources like water or fuel, or even the threat of unfriendly, intelligent alien life. But in reality, scientists are finding that the biggest obstacle to today's space travel is dust.

The principal complicating factors for SSTO from Earth are: high orbital velocity of over 7,400 meters per second (27,000 km/h; 17,000 mph); the need to overcome Earth's gravity, especially in the early stages of flight; and flight within Earth's atmosphere, which limits speed in the early stages of flight due to drag, ...

Yet the edge of space – or the point where we consider spacecraft and astronauts to have entered space, known as the Von Karman Line – is only 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level.

Gravity. Fortunately for us, Earth's gravity is strong enough to hold onto its atmosphere. Mars, for example, is less than half Earth's size and around one-tenth Earth's mass. Less mass means less gravitational pull.

The Outer Space Treaty

There is no claim for sovereignty in space; no nation can “own” space, the Moon or any other body. Weapons of mass destruction are forbidden in orbit and beyond, and the Moon, the planets, and other celestial bodies can only be used for peaceful purposes.

These five treaties deal with issues such as the non-appropriation of outer space by any one country, arms control, the freedom of exploration, liability for damage caused by space objects, the safety and rescue of spacecraft and astronauts, the prevention of harmful interference with space activities and the ...

How much is a ticket to fly out of space? ›

For a suborbital trip on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo and Blue Origin's New Shepard, seats typically cost $250,000 to $500,000. Flights beyond that to actual orbit—a much higher altitude—are far more expensive, fetching more than $50 million per seat.

That's because conventional planes need air for both propulsion and lift, and space is essentially a vacuum. The first plane to reach space was the X-15, designed in the mid-1950s for the US National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), forerunner of NASA.

Coffin corner (also known as the aerodynamic ceiling or Q corner) is the region of flight where a fast but subsonic fixed-wing aircraft's stall speed is near the critical Mach number, at a given gross weight and G-force loading. In this region of flight, it is very difficult to keep an airplane in stable flight.

If the pilots' goal was to get to space, well, let's just say they didn't get close. Only reaching 41,000 feet, they were just over 12% of the way to escaping our atmosphere. So, we know that airplanes can't fly into space, but there actually is a type of plane that can. That's right, you guessed it: spaceplanes.

The Short Answer:

Earth's gravity is strong enough to hold onto its atmosphere and keep it from drifting into space.

Rocket engines are the only currently practical means of reaching space. Conventional airplane engines cannot reach space due to the lack of oxygen.

If a spaceship travels straight up or down for an infinite amount of time, it will not arrive anywhere since there are no physical boundaries in space. It will continue to move until it encounters another object with a gravitational pull.