Ub (cont’d):
The thing to worry about is being tail-heavy, which in reality every rocket must be, so we’re not going to talk about them.
Airplanes want their balance to be just a little bit ahead of the wings, so that if the airplane stalls, it recovers by falling nose-first instead of tail-first. When an airplane stalls and falls nose-first, it picks up speed going forward and starts flying again. If the plane stalls and starts falling tail first, that goes against the design specifications, as it is challenging to recover when air is passing around the wings in the wrong direction. Because pilots watch for this, you don’t have to worry about it – or even be aware of it.
But you’ll also be happy to know two things about stalling an airplane:
1. It’s perfectly avoidable, and
2. It happens on every single flight except some that have crashed because they didn’t stall.
If you’ve flown and are reading this, you are proof positive that airplanes are supposed to stall. That’s because if you didn’t stall, you would be in the air flying. And if you are in the air as you read this, what are you doing flying at a time like this? You should be on the ground, at home, practicing social distancing locked away in your bathtub with your family and pets, with a mattress over you for protection from the virus.
