Linda wrote:Kotik, with your flying experience, I think you should write a story about propeller airplane flying on Vulcan. How would the thinner atmosphere and heavier gravity effect the design of gasoline powered propeller airplanes? Would they even have them at some point in their history of flight on Vulcan? How would the flying techniques be different? Should I make this a story challenge to you?
Well, there's one problem with propeller planes and that is the density of the atmosphere. Piston engined airplaines usually do not fly higher than 12.000 feet, because they aren't pressurized, while rare examples like the Cessna C414 reach up to 20.000 feet. Turboprop planes are usually limited to 25.000 feet, may be some more, but no much, because the thinner the air gets, the higher gets an airplane's stall speed (the speed at which the airflow over the wings isn't enough to keep it flying), the higher you get, the smaller becomes the margin between stall speed and the planes maximum speed.
I would venture a guess that a propeller plane could fly on Vulcan, but not very high and it would be extremely dangerous.
[EDIT]
I just noticed I didn't answer some of your questions. Basically, if Vulcans had airplanes at one point, to make them function they would have to be significantly faster than Earth planes, due to the thinner atmosphere - at least if they followed the same principles as flight on Earth.
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Don't worry, Kotik's not gonna stuff his toy into the armco 