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Comment on Why Cant Commercial Airplanes Go Faster? (2012)parent

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Yeah give it a try if you have a minute out of curiosity. X-Plane, if I remember correctly, prized itself on a pretty good airfoil model.

So I tried it in some simulated Cessna, and as I predicted, upon rotating so that my head pointed at the ground, the plane started to descend. I'm a pretty terrible pilot, though :)

I think this has a lot to do with the wing's angle of attack (most planes' wings have a slight upward tilt; when upside-down, that tilt goes downward instead). It would be more interesting to see the effect on something without an AoA bias.

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