If a plane had unlimited gas how far could you fly straight up,REALIZE there are no dead ends out there?

Answer 1

What limits the altitude of an airplane has nothing to do with how much fuel it has.

It has to do with the type of engine it has, and the maximum speed it can obtain.

Both propeller and jet engines need air .... both because they need oxygen to burn the fuel, and because they work by pushing air backwards.

So every airplane will reach a height at which it doesn't have enough air to go any faster ... at that point it can't go any higher.

As far as momentum carrying you further, this is determined by the maximum speed of the airplane. To go further up, you need to have enough force in the engine to counteract the force of gravity. To keep going indefinitely, you need enough force to reach the escape velocity determined by the amount of gravity of the earth ... and that is a *huge* velocity. Even the Space Shuttle rocket can't get the Space Shuttle out of the earth's orbit.

That's why it takes an *enormous* rocket like the Saturn V to get a small ship like the Apollo spacecraft out of the earth's orbit on its way to the moon. Once in space, its rockets work without oxygen because they carry their own oxygen with them for fuel (something an airplane does not do).

Answer 2

The above answer is right. Also, planes go horizontally not vertically, and if you want to really make planes fly vertically they have to have speed greater than escape velocity (11.6 KM/s or so) to escape out of gravitational pull of earth.

But one intresting fact is that once the plane escapes in to the vaccuum of outer space it need not burn its fuel, all it would need is its momentum it had gained before. Once in space rockets use small fuel burns to change directions only as they already have the speed.

Answer 3

Every airplane that's ever been built has a ceiling, beyond which it cannot gain attitude.

That being said, if you had an airplane that went fast enough in the atmosphere, and didn't burn up, it could coast upwards and outwards once the wings had no more lift, and could in principle escape to infinity. No such "spaceplane" has ever yet been built.

Answer 4

Davis-Monthan Air tension Base. Any WW2-era airplane have long been decreased to soup cans. All airplane stored there now are cutting-edge (mid-60s and later) militia and civil airplane. Any older airplane that would nevertheless be there probably belonged to the wooded area service as "borate bombers" (i.e., PV-2 Neptunes, B-26 Invaders, and DC-4s).

Answer 5

Newton's law states that an object in motion remains in motion without other forces. Thus theoretically, the plane would fly forever.

:)

Answer 6

I assume this is a jet or petrol engine? Not that far, as eventually there is not enough oxygen, and the engine would stop burning fuel. I think it is about 75,000 feet.

Answer 7

Generaly, no more than 140,000ft or so as eventualy the air will become too thin to support even a scram jet.