Why don't they anodize aluminum aircraft? Surely it would be many pounds lighter.
>>2056231how are you gonna dip an entire fucking plane to anodize ityou'll need a fucking river worth of acid
>>2056233Do it piece by piece?
>>2056231Does anodizing make stuff lighter? I thought it was just a way to rustproof it more nicely (and easier to dye it) than bluing
>>2056241airplane paint is heavy. like 1000 lbs
Return to plain plane
They do don't they?Like the wings aren't painted
>>2056244As I understood it, they started doing that to save fuel but the savings were eaten up by increased maintenance costs.And then there was also that study done during WWII that found that unpainted B-17s were slower and less fuel efficient than painted ones because exposed riveting increased aerodynamical drag.
>>2056291Nonsense. Unpainted points are slower because red makes it go faster.
>>2056292Meanwhile every airliner is white nowadays.
>>2056311das racist
>>2056292AUGHT BOYZ, DIS GIT IS A PROPPA GENIUS
the paint on planes improves aerodynamics and protects the surface from wear and those two benefits far outweigh the loss in efficiency from the weight, but entirely for the economical reasonsit is more efficient to fly without paint, the aerodynamic benefit of paint filling in all the teeny tiny little gaps and imperfections and smoothing out the transitions of surfaces isnt enough to overcome that benefit of weight savings on its ownbut the added durability and resistance to corrosion (aluminum DOES corrode just not like iron/steel does) means the maintenance cost is lower
