alt Hacker NewsIt used about half of its fuel for taxiing, takeoff, climb, and acceleration to cruising speed. Maybe that's where the number came from originally and it got mangled in translation.
It used about half of its fuel for taxiing, takeoff, climb, and acceleration to cruising speed. Maybe that's where the number came from originally and it got mangled in translation.
When I looked into this in another context (not supersonic jets), while "a lot" of fuel was used just getting the jet up to speed going down the runway, "most" of the fuel was going from 1 foot off the ground to N0,000 feet.
(I was curious if there was any opportunity for some sort of system to power take-off from the ground, be it catapults like on air craft carriers or just power-transmission for electric planes, and the numbers I found were that while a surprising amount of fuel was used by the time the plane lifted off, it was more like 5% than 50%.)