I don't believe planes can fly
While I’ve been in a plane many times, I still have doubts over the science of powered flight. Hot air balloons make sense to me, yet those big heavy steel planes with their mega-tonne jet engines – no, that’s just too farfetched.
The idea that the take-off, created by small wings at speed is enough to pull a plane into the air to heights of 40,000 feet – is that plausible? I’m just not buying it.
Before you start to worry I’ve gone all David Icke on you, these were the thoughts I used to distract myself as pain relief while finishing the last two miles of yesterday’s Great South Run in the hideous wind and with leg cramps.
It came about as I first concluded that doing a marathon wasn’t physically possible and therefore the TV elite runners are all in fact identical triplets doing it as a tag team. After that, the concept of interrogating my doubts about flying just popped into my head.
My surmise was there’s a projector screen erected outside displaying a pre-filmed moving skyline (I can only presume it was filmed from a hot air balloon and sped up). This is then synched with hydraulic ramps to simulate take off and landing. These ramps are switched off during the main flight (for budgetary reasons – natch) while the plane is tugged to the destination.
Slightly annoyingly this does raise the question that the world and temperature variations are much smaller than we were led to believe previously – but overall isn’t that still slightly more plausible than planes being able to fly?
Normal, saner blog service will be resumed tomorrow. Meanwhile, is there anything you know is true, but still can’t believe?
