Question: can aeroplanes fly to space

Simone Sturniolo answered on 24 Jun 2013:

No, they can’t. Airplanes need air to fly, for two reasons. The first one is that their engines burn fuel and need air for this. If you close a flame under a glass and wait until it uses up all the air inside, it ends up going off, because without air, a flame can’t burn any more (oxygen is one vital component of the chemical reaction that keeps it burning). Same goes for the engines! Without air, they would just turn off and stop working.
The second and most important problem, however, is the way airplanes fly itself. Airplanes fly thanks to their wings – which allow them to receive a lift, a push from the bottom, when they move really fast through the air. In other words, air is what keeps them afloat! You could say that planes are actually leaning on the air under their wings, and that’s how they keep flying. This happens because the wings are shaped in a way to create winds of different speed on the top and on the bottom of the wing. In this way, the air on the top of the wing has a lower pressure than the one at the bottom – and therefore the air at the bottom pushes the airplane upwards!
Flying without air is a different matter. Rockets and shuttles store their own oxygen together with the fuel (so that they don’t need air to burn it) and use their fuel’s gases (once it’s burnt) to push themselves upwards by blowing them downwards – a bit like taking a full balloon and letting the air come out of its rear. As the air comes out, the balloon will be pushed forwards and zap around the room!