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An aircraft is a machine that can fly by gaining support from the air. It counteracts gravity by using the static lift or dynamic aerodynamic surface lift or, in some cases, moving down from jet engines. Typical examples of aircraft include airplanes, helicopters, airships (including blimps), gliders, paramotors and hot air balloons.

The human activity that surrounds the aircraft is called aviation. Aviation science, including the design and construction of aircraft, is called aeronautics. Crewed aircraft are flown by an onboard pilot, but unmanned aerial vehicles can be controlled remotely or independently using on-board computers. Aircraft can be classified according to various criteria, such as type of lift, aircraft propulsion, usage and others.

Flying model craft and stories of manned flights date back to many centuries; But the first ascent manned safe descent, however, was made today by large hot-air balloons created in the 18th century. Each of the two World Wars brought great technical progress.

Heavier-than-air aircraft, such as airplanes, must find a way to push air or gas downwards so that a reaction can occur (according to Newton’s laws) to push the aircraft upwards. This dynamic movement in the air is the source of the term aerodynamics. There are two ways to create a dynamic lift – aerodynamic lift and power lift in the form of engine thrust.

Aircraft Sizes

• The smallest aircraft are toys and even smaller, nano-aircraft.
• The largest aircraft in size and volume (2016) is a British Airlander 10 hybrid airship, 302 feet (95 meters) long with a helicopter and fixed wings, which is said to be capable of speeds up to 90 miles per hour about 150 km./h) and two-week airworthiness with a carrying capacity of up to 22,050 pounds (11 tons).
• The largest aircraft and the largest planned aircraft that will ever be built by 2016 is Antonov An-225 Mriya. This 80-meter Ukrainian six-engine Russian transport of the 80s, 84 meters long, with a wingspan of 88 meters. It has a world payload record after shipping 200,000 tons of goods and recently flown 100 tons of cargo. With a weight of 1.1 to 1.4 million pounds (550-700 tons) of maximum mass, this is the heaviest aircraft that was built up to this point. It can cruise at 500 miles per hour.
• The largest military aircraft are the Ukrainian/Russian Antonov An-124 Ruslan (the second largest aircraft in the world, also used as a civilian vehicle) and the American Lockheed C-5 Galaxy transport, weighing over 765,000 pounds (more than 380 tons), 8-stroke, piston/rowing screw Hughes H-4 Hercules “Fir Goose” – a wooden flying wagon of the American World War II with a wider wingspan (94m/260 feet) from any current plane and tail height, (Airbus A380 -800 by 24.1 meters/78 feet) – only one short hop in the late 1940s and never flew out of ground effect.
• The largest civilian aircraft, except the An-225 above and An-124, are the airline Airbus Beluga, a derivative of the Airbus A300, and the Boeing Dreamlifter for the Boeing 747/transport. Years of the last century, the heaviest aircraft ever built, with a maximum weight of 836,000 pounds (more than 400 tons), and the two-story Airbus A380 “super-giant” (the largest passenger airliner in the world).

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