Purpose
Aircraft designs include compromises intended to maximize performance for a particular role. One of the most fundamental of these is the size of the wing; a larger wing will provide more lift and reduce takeoff and landing distance, but will increase drag during cruising flight and thereby lead to lower than optimum fuel economy. High-lift devices are used to smooth out the differences between the two goals, allowing the use of an efficient cruising wing, and adding lift for takeoff and landing.
Read more about this topic: High-lift Device
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgement, will probably for ever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I ... am in favour of the race to which I belong having the superior position.”
—Abraham Lincoln (18091865)
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no minds eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
—Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)
“The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)