If humans can hang glide I don’t see why we couldn’t use those aerodynamic principles to try to glide a car hooked up to glider wings. It’s a real engineering challenge, but I feel like it would be possible to get some distance in a scenario where a car uses its wheels to go fast, drives off a cliff, deploys some kind of glider wings (or drive with the glider wings timed out to where the car gets to the cliff edge right at the point where the wings plus updraft provide enough lift) to get the vehicle to glide a substantial distance.
Is there a lift vs drag problem that precludes making a glider with such a heavy payload? It might not be as simple as bigger wings to support the heavier weight.
The terminal velocity of a penny is at least 40 km/h. A Porsche would be much higher. Assuming the Porsche fell that slowly and reached terminal velocity instantly, the cliff would have to be 20 km high for the Porsche to fall for 30 minutes. Given Mt. Everest is just under 9 km high, you would need more than 2 Mt. Everests of height for your cliff to make this happen.
Based on all that, the terminal velocity of a Porsche is irrelevant.
Off a cliff yeah
It would have to be a very high cliff.
Or have a really strong updraft
Or go through the center of gravity so it eventually turns back around
If humans can hang glide I don’t see why we couldn’t use those aerodynamic principles to try to glide a car hooked up to glider wings. It’s a real engineering challenge, but I feel like it would be possible to get some distance in a scenario where a car uses its wheels to go fast, drives off a cliff, deploys some kind of glider wings (or drive with the glider wings timed out to where the car gets to the cliff edge right at the point where the wings plus updraft provide enough lift) to get the vehicle to glide a substantial distance.
Seems horribly dangerous but not impossible.
Is there a lift vs drag problem that precludes making a glider with such a heavy payload? It might not be as simple as bigger wings to support the heavier weight.
Anyone know the terminal velocity of a falling Porsche 914? lol
The terminal velocity of a penny is at least 40 km/h. A Porsche would be much higher. Assuming the Porsche fell that slowly and reached terminal velocity instantly, the cliff would have to be 20 km high for the Porsche to fall for 30 minutes. Given Mt. Everest is just under 9 km high, you would need more than 2 Mt. Everests of height for your cliff to make this happen.
Based on all that, the terminal velocity of a Porsche is irrelevant.