Operation
The Harrier Jump Jet, capable of taking off vertically, can only do so at less than its maximum weight. In most cases the aircraft does a short take off where it gains forward speed and thus aerodynamic lift, saving fuel.
On aircraft carriers a ramp is frequently employed at the end of the carrier which allows the aircraft to accelerate along the carrier and then use a lower amount of fuel to take to the air.
Landings are also typically performed very differently. Although a conventional landing is possible, the range of speeds that this can be done over is narrow (due to relatively vulnerable outrigger undercarriage). Operationally the aircraft therefore usually does a near vertical landing with some forward speed.
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“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)