Aeronautics
Aeronautics is the science and practice of designing, building, and operating aircraft and other machines that fly within Earth’s atmosphere.
Aerodynamics: The study of how air moves and exerts forces on objects moving through it. Explains how wings and other surfaces generate forces during atmospheric flight.
Fluid mechanics: The study of fluids at rest and in motion. Airflow around an aircraft is a fluid-mechanics problem.
Commercial aviation: The operation of aircraft to transport passengers or cargo for commercial purposes. Airliners apply aeronautical design to efficient, reliable mass transportation.
Wright brothers: Wilbur and Orville Wright were American inventors who achieved the first sustained, controlled, powered airplane flight. Their control system and 1903 flights established practical powered aeronautics.
Astronautics: The science and engineering of travel and activity beyond Earth's atmosphere. It addresses flight where atmospheric aerodynamics no longer provides the main framework.
Lift (force): The component of a fluid force perpendicular to an object's direction of motion. Lift supports an aircraft's weight when its aerodynamic force is sufficient.
Newton's laws of motion: Three principles relating an object's motion to the forces acting on it. They describe how thrust, drag, lift, and weight change aircraft motion.
General aviation: Civil aviation other than scheduled airline and military operations. It includes private, instructional, and many specialized aircraft operations.
Cayley glider: A series of nineteenth-century gliders built by English engineer George Cayley to test heavier-than-air flight. Cayley's experiments helped separate lift, propulsion, and control as design problems.
Aerostatics: The study and use of buoyant flight by balloons and other lighter-than-air craft. Buoyant support differs from the aerodynamic lift central to most aeronautical vehicles.