Airfoils | TriviaQuestions.online

⭐ In the context of rockets, airfoils are considered…

Rockets can employ airfoils for flight control, but their effectiveness is diminished by atmospheric drag, making them more suitable for operation outside the atmosphere where drag is absent.

⭐ Core Definition: Airfoils

An airfoil (American English) or aerofoil (British English) is a streamlined body that is capable of generating significantly more lift than drag. Wings, sails and propeller blades are examples of airfoils. Foils of similar function designed with water as the working fluid are called hydrofoils.

When oriented at a suitable angle, a solid body moving through a fluid deflects the oncoming fluid (for fixed-wing aircraft, a downward force), resulting in a force on the airfoil in the direction opposite to the deflection. This force is known as aerodynamic force and can be resolved into two components: lift (perpendicular to the remote freestream velocity) and drag (parallel to the freestream velocity).

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👉 Airfoils in the context of Rocket

A rocket (from Italian: rocchetto, lit. ''bobbin/spool'', and so named for its shape) is an elongated flying vehicle that uses a rocket engine to accelerate without using any surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Unlike jet engines, rockets are fuelled entirely by propellant which they carry, without the need for oxygen from air; consequently a rocket can fly in the vacuum of space. Rockets suffer deceleration by atmospheric drag in air, and operate more efficiently outside the atmosphere.

Multistage rockets are capable of attaining escape velocity from Earth and therefore can achieve unlimited maximum altitude. Compared with airbreathing engines, rockets are lightweight and powerful and capable of generating large accelerations. To control their flight, rockets may use momentum, airfoils, auxiliary reaction engines, gimballed thrust, momentum wheels, deflection of the exhaust stream, propellant flow, and spin, or may simply fly in a ballistic trajectory under the influence of gravity.

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