Human Perception of Load Factor
When the load factor is +1, all occupants of the aircraft feel that their weight is normal. When the load factor is greater than +1 all occupants feel heavier than usual. For example, in a 2 g maneuver all occupants feel that their weight is twice normal. When the load factor is zero, or very small, all occupants feel weightless. When the load factor is negative, all occupants feel they are upside down.
Human beings have limited ability to withstand a load factor significantly greater than 1, both positive and negative. Unmanned aerial vehicles can be designed for much greater load factors, both positive and negative, than conventional aircraft because these vehicles can be used in maneuvers which would be incapacitating for a human pilot.
Read more about this topic: Load Factor (aeronautics)
Famous quotes containing the words human, perception, load and/or factor:
“As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)