jet

Veritasium explains how jet engines run hotter than their components' melting points, using cooling air and single-crystal superalloy turbine blades. It covers how the blades are grown as aligned crystals.

A hands-on comparison of how jet fuel, diesel, heating oil, kerosene, avgas and gasoline burn and what color they are. It shows that gasoline ignites more easily than jet fuel.

A short video from a blacksmith, who heats and bends steel to rebut the claim that jet fuel could not weaken the steel in the World Trade Center. It is delivered with a lot of attitude.

Lex Fridman interviews Navy pilot David Fravor, a primary witness of the 2004 Tic Tac UFO encounter, about the sighting, military aviation and aerospace engineering. The conversation runs close to four hours.

The first episode of the 1996 PBS documentary series on the creation of the Boeing 777. It follows the design, build and certification process, including meetings with subcontractors.

Gravity Industries tests its jet suit for paramedic mountain rescue with the Great North Air Ambulance in the Lake District, reaching a casualty in 90 seconds versus a 25-minute climb.

A short Wendover Productions explainer on ETOPS, the rules that let twin-engine jets fly long routes over oceans. It covers the economics that favored twinjets like the 787 over four-engine aircraft like the A380 and 747.

Scott Manley explains rotating detonation engines, how they differ from pulsed detonation engines, and why thermodynamics predicts they beat traditional jet and rocket engines.

Cirrus introduces Safe Return, an emergency autoland system for its Vision Jet. A passenger presses a single button and the aircraft squawks emergency, reroutes and lands itself.

Promotional video from Zapata Racing showing Franky Zapata flying the Flyboard Air prototype, claiming autonomous flight to 10,000 feet, 150 km/h top speed and 10 minutes of endurance.

A short clip of a jet-powered flying lawnmower, the Sky Cutter, and related RC flying lawnmowers.

A special lecture from MIT's Private Pilot Ground School in which Lt. Col. Randy Gordon, a fighter and test pilot, describes F-22 flight controls. Topics include thrust vectoring, the pilot command system and how software handles failures.

Lilium's CTO gives a short update on the electric jet's design, certification and development. It shows the canard and rear wing layout and the wheel design.

Footage of an Airbus A380 engine blade-off test, in which a fan blade is deliberately released at full thrust to show the engine contains the failure.

Real Engineering analyzes whether electric planes are feasible, focusing on battery energy density limits compared with jet fuel. It concludes electric flight works mainly for short ranges.

Archival footage of Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolling the 707 prototype, the Dash-80, over Lake Washington in 1955 during a demonstration.

Cockpit camera footage of a jet hitting a bird after takeoff, losing its engine and the crew ejecting. Commenters note it is actually a Canadian CT-155 Hawk despite the F16 title.

A deadpan comedy video offering mock advice on defending your car from supermaneuverable fighter jets and air-to-surface missiles. It jokes about installing close-in Gatling guns and radar.

A re-upload of American Airlines captain Warren Vanderburgh's 1997 presentation warning that pilots who over-rely on cockpit automation lose manual flying skills and awareness. The uploader adds context from his own flying.

Wendover Productions explains how airlines make money from different cabin classes and why premium seats matter so much to profits. It also touches on how this shaped decisions such as the decline of supersonic travel.

CGP Grey compares airplane boarding methods, based on an arXiv paper, and shows why the intuitive back-to-front approach is slow while random or outside-in boarding does better.

Real Engineering explains how Zipline built a drone delivery network for medical supplies in Rwanda. It covers the fixed-wing drones, catapult launch, parachute drop and the logistics behind the service.

A feature-length film by the Makani team chronicling their thirteen-year effort to build energy kites that harvest wind power, with footage from test sites in Hawaii, California and Norway. It shows the engineering, the team and the eventual shutdown.

A Joe Rogan podcast with retired Navy commander David Fravor, who describes his 2004 Tic Tac UFO encounter, and filmmaker Jeremy Corbell. Fravor walks through the incident and the released videos.

Wendover Productions explains why Boeing's efficient 787 beat Airbus's giant A380, contrasting hub-and-spoke with point-to-point routes. It covers the economics of long-haul flights.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day undergoes hypoxia training and experiences his own impaired thinking as oxygen is withdrawn. The video shows how quickly and unnoticeably oxygen deprivation degrades judgment, illustrating why you put your own mask on first.

An Al Jazeera investigation into Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, featuring current and former engineers who voice safety concerns. It covers quality control problems at the South Carolina plant and the roots of the battery problems that grounded the plane.

Mentour Pilot's 56-minute account of the MH370 disappearance and what is now known, including the WSPR radio tracking technique and other sensing methods. It was made ahead of renewed search efforts.

Nickolas Means tells the story of United Airlines Flight 232, which lost all flight control yet saved more than half its passengers. He draws lessons on teamwork, crew resource management and leadership for software teams.

A short video on the US Sprint anti-ballistic missile, which accelerated to around Mach 10 in seconds under extreme g-forces and heat. It includes striking launch footage and a brief development history.

Veritasium's Derek Muller visits NASA JPL to see the Mars helicopter Ingenuity before it was mounted on the rover. He explains how it can fly in Mars's thin atmosphere with large, fast-spinning contra-rotating rotors and low mass, and covers power and cold.

Wendover Productions explains why drone delivery has not become the future once promised. It covers no-fly zones, costs and the difficulty of the final drop-off.

LEMMiNO's 25-minute documentary on the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. It walks through the official investigation's findings and the leading theories, including satellite data and hydrophone recordings.

A Boeing 737 pilot explains the runaway stabilizer checklist, the procedure for stopping unwanted horizontal stabilizer movement such as an MCAS activation on the 737 MAX. He walks through the steps, the trim cutout switches and the jackscrew mechanism, and shows a simulator run including the manual trim wheel effort.

Festo's promo video of SmartBird, an ultralight bionic flying model inspired by the herring gull that flaps and twists its wings to fly. It shows the robot in flight.

Wendover Productions explains how overnight shipping works, covering the hub-and-spoke logistics of companies like FedEx and UPS and the use of cargo aircraft. It touches on the economics that make next-day delivery possible.

An Al Jazeera English People & Power investigation from 2010 into safety problems with the Boeing 737NG, featuring whistleblowers on cracking parts, hand-made structural components and an alleged cover-up.

Retired Boeing Technical Fellow Doug McLean walks through common misconceptions in aerodynamics, drawing on his book Understanding Aerodynamics. He critiques popular explanations of wing lift and rocket thrust and argues for arguing from the real physics.

A Wendover Productions explainer arguing that major airlines make much of their profit from loyalty programs and co-branded credit cards rather than flying. It frames airlines as quasi-banks that sell points in bulk, using United's pandemic-era loan as a hook.

Wendover Productions explains why modern airliners fly no faster than they did decades ago, covering the economics of speed and fuel efficiency, and why supersonic travel faded.