would an aeroplane be able fly to space.?

Question

if it just kept going up?

Answer 1

Yes...the Space Shuttle is an airplane. Anything can fly in space...a piano... a ficus tree...a submarine...if you could get it into space without it being destroyed by the atmospheric pressures encountered during lift-off and acceleration! They wouldn't be able to maneuver very well, though! (The Space Shuttle's wings are useless in space...it maneuvers with small rockets. The wings are for atmospheric-use only.)

Answer 2

Well, first of all, the X-15 was an airplane, and it flew in space, so all these people calling you an idiot need to read a few history books.

There's two issues about planes and outer space: lift and propulsion.

A plane goes up because the shape of its wings generate lift when the plane is in motion. Lift is caused by air, and it won't work when there's no air. A plane uses lift to rise and propulsion (it's propellor or jets) to move forward. A rocket, on the other hand, uses its propulsion to rise. So a plane that would go into space would have to rely on its engine to go up when there was no longer enough air pressure to provide lift.

Also, a plane that would go into space would have to have some other method of control. And airplane turns and banks and climbs/descends because of ailerons and elevons on its wings and horizontal stabilizers. These work by changing the lift, and, again, that won't work in space. As someone pointed out, the shuttle is a plane of sorts. It uses hypergolic rockets on either side of its tail (the orbital maneuvering engines) and aerosol rockets on its nose to change position in space.

The second problem is propulsion. You can toss out propellors. They don't even work at supersonic speeds. Jets can work at super high speeds (several times the speed of sound), but they require air to burn the fuel. For a space vehicle, you are going to have to have a rocket. A rocket combines some sort of fuel with an oxidizer in liquid or solid form so that it can burn even when there is no air/oxygen available to support combustion.

NASA was thinking about a space plane to replace conventional aircraft in long distance journeys. (Forget the Concorde; how would you like to fly from London to Sydney in 2.5 hours?) This vehicle, called the National AeroSpace Plane, or NASP, would require FOUR separate engines. First, it would take off from a regular airport using a conventional jet engine. Next, it would use a ramjet to acheive supersonic speeds. (A ramjet is a type of engine that does not require compressors. Jet engines use compressors to compress and slow air, so that it can better support combustion.) A special type of ramjet that could operate at supersonic speeds, called a Scramjet, would be employed to get the craft near the edge of space, and a rocket would boost it into a suborbital path.

It was the difficulty in developing a working scramjet that scuttled the NASP, not the inability of an airplane to fly in space.
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Answer 3

Not unless it had a second propulsion system and heat/radiation shielding... Jet engines are air breathing... They suck in air through the intakes, compress it, inject fuel into it and ignite it. The exhaust gasses from this are released out of the jetpipe pushing the aircraft forward. If the aircraft got too high, the engines would suffocate and stall, the aircraft would plummet to earth and probably break up due to excessive forces on the airframe. Those hypersonic aircraft that fly at Mach 5-7 at the edge of space still use air breathing scramjets (a simplified jet engine, no moving parts) they would also stall if they went any higher. So far, only rocket propulsion is the only feasable means of space propulsion.

Answer 4

as u know an aeroplane works on bernauli's principle.i.e.bodies move from areas of higher pressure to areas of lower pressures
and in case of an aeroplane,it flies because it is designed as such that the air pressure in the region above its wings is less than the region below so it moves upwards.
in space there is negligible air, hence neglible air,pressure so it cannot goup or down or change directions(which is also based on the same principle) but it can just hower around out of control just like they show in the movies but it cannot go into outer space just like that unlike rockets which work on a different principle i.e. every actoin has and equal and opposite reaction.

Answer 5

No dear!not an ordinary aeroplane i guess!The primary reason is that the earth has a certain grvitational pull because of which it attracts everything towards its core.Only those objects which are moving with a velocity greater than a certain velocity,known as escape velocity,can escape this gravitational pull and reach the outer space.The value of this escape velocity is 11.6km/s.
ordinary aeroplanes do not exceed this generally and hence do not fly out to space

Answer 6

YES. NASA has already done it in the 1960's with the X-15 space-plane.

Flying at a speeds betwwen 4 and Mach 6 it reached a record altitude of 354,200 feet (67 miles).

The official 'edge of space' is 50 miles.

Pilots who flew the X-15 above 50 miles were classed as astronauts.

Answer 7

hi dude,, in order to go into space it has to overcome the gravitaional spped of earth.... calculations say that it needs at least 11.8kmph spped to get rid of the gravitational force!! and also the vehicle should be able to overcome the frictional speed of the atmosphere at that speed.. then only a vehicle can go into spave.... if an aeroplane is able to go then it is called space craft!! the aeroplanes material is different from space craft material..... and also it to get that speed it should have very huge engines... u might have seen the videos of rocket launching!! if not see how much difficult to enter into space!! hope this is helpful to u!!

Answer 8

Depends on what you would call SPACE. I mean space is everywhere, it's just dat on the earth, the darn air is coverin it up. And wut after da earth moves to anatha point in the universe? Wouldn't the previous place be called space? And there aien't no such thing as a fixed place in the universe. It's all relative to tha observer (that's you!). So what WOULD you call space? But then again, if the aeroplane were to actually go to what YOU would call outer space, it would no longer be called space according to HUMAN definition. I mean, after tha plane occupies dat space, it aien't called space anymore, if the atmosphere can't be called space. So, according to ME, it CAN fly in space.

Answer 9

No they can only fly to a certain height then the atmosphere changes too much for them to be able to push into space.

Answer 10

No. An airplane uses speed and air to go up. The escape velocity of Earth is about MACH 40, the fastest planes have only gone up to MACH 4, you need MACH 40 to go into space! You can go up and go up, but the ascend will become slower and slower until you just can't go up anymore because of the lack of air, you need air to go further up.