Glider aircraft in the context of "Unpowered aircraft"

An airplane (American English), or aeroplane (Commonwealth English), informally plane, is a fixed-wing aircraft that is propelled forward by thrust from a jet engine, propeller, or rocket engine. Airplanes come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and wing configurations. The broad spectrum of uses for airplanes includes recreation, transportation of goods and people, military, and research. Worldwide, commercial aviation transports more than four billion passengers annually on airliners and transports more than 200 billion tonne-kilometers of cargo annually, which is less than 1% of the world's cargo movement. Most airplanes are flown by a pilot on board the aircraft, but some are designed to be remotely or computer-controlled, such as drones.

The Wright brothers invented and flew the first airplane in 1903, recognized as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight". They built on the works of George Cayley , dating from 1799, when he set forth the concept of the modern airplane (and later built and flew models and successful passenger-carrying gliders) and the work of German pioneer of human aviation Otto Lilienthal, who, between 1867 and 1896, also studied heavier-than-air flight. Lilienthal's flight attempts in 1891 are seen as the beginning of human flight.Following its limited use in World War I, aircraft technology continued to develop. Airplanes had a presence in all the major battles of World War II. The first jet aircraft was the German Heinkel He 178 in 1939. The first jet airliner, the de Havilland Comet, was introduced in 1952. The Boeing 707, the first widely successful commercial jet, was in commercial service for more than 60 years, from 1958 to 2019.

The Lilienthal Normalsegelapparat (German: "Normal soaring apparatus") is a glider designed by Otto Lilienthal in Germany in the late 19th century. It is considered to be the first aeroplane to be serially produced, examples being made between 1893 and 1896.

Nine examples are known to have been sold, the buyers including Nikolai Zhukovsky and William Randolph Hearst. Three original "normal gliders" are preserved in museums in London, Moscow, and Washington, and a fragment of one is preserved in Munich. A similar glider, the Sturmflügelapparat ("storm wing apparatus") is preserved in the Technisches Museum in Vienna.

The Space Shuttle orbiter is the spaceplane component of the Space Shuttle, a partially reusable orbital spacecraft system that was part of the discontinued Space Shuttle program. Operated from 1981 to 2011 by NASA, the U.S. space agency, this vehicle could carry astronauts and payloads into low Earth orbit, perform in-space operations, then re-enter the atmosphere and land as a glider, returning its crew and any on-board payload to the Earth.

Six orbiters were built for flight: Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. All were built in Palmdale, California, by the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Rockwell International company's North American Aircraft Operations branch. The first orbiter, Enterprise, made its maiden flight in 1977. An unpowered glider, it was carried by a modified Boeing 747 airliner called the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and released for a series of atmospheric test flights and landings. Enterprise was partially disassembled and retired after completion of critical testing. The remaining orbiters were fully operational spacecraft, and were launched vertically as part of the Space Shuttle stack.

The DG Flugzeugbau DG-800 series is a family of 15 metre and 18 metre single-seat gliders and motor gliders produced by Glaser-Dirks since 1993 and by DG Flugzeugbau GmbH after 1997. It is the successor to the DG-400 and the DG-600 models.

A glider or sailplane is a type of glider aircraft used in the leisure activity and sport of gliding (also called soaring). This unpowered aircraft can use naturally occurring currents of rising air in the atmosphere to gain altitude. Sailplanes are aerodynamically streamlined, so they can fly a significant distance forward for a small decrease in altitude.

In North America, the term 'sailplane' is also used to describe this type of aircraft. In other parts of the English-speaking world, the word 'glider' is more common.

Lift is a meteorological phenomenon used as an energy source by soaring aircraft and soaring birds. The most common human application of lift is in sport and recreation. The three air sports that use soaring flight are: gliding, hang gliding and paragliding.

Energy can be gained by using rising air from four sources:

Gliding is a recreational activity and competitive air sport in which pilots fly unpowered aircraft known as gliders or sailplanes using naturally occurring currents of rising air in the atmosphere to remain airborne. The word soaring is also used for the sport.

Gliding as a sport began in the 1920s. Initially the objective was to increase the duration of flights but soon pilots attempted cross-country flights away from the place of launch. Improvements in aerodynamics and in the understanding of weather phenomena have allowed greater distances at higher average speeds. Long distances are now flown using any of the main sources of rising air: ridge lift, thermals and lee waves. When conditions are favourable, experienced pilots can now fly hundreds of kilometres before returning to their home airfields; occasionally flights of more than 1,000 kilometres (621 mi) are achieved.