how many people flying at any one time?

BTIZ wrote:

soo... if all those people are in the air.. is the earth suddenly that much
lighter??

In an airplane, air is pushed down to support the plane and it's contents, so
the pressure on the Earth's surface doesn't change. I'd say that makes it "the
same weight". I don't know if one can say the same about people in lighter than
air craft.

George Patterson
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either by marriage or by removal of the afflicted from the circumstances
under which he incurred the condition. It is sometimes fatal, but more
often to the physician than to the patient.

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message
...
In an airplane, air is pushed down to support the plane and it's contents,
so
the pressure on the Earth's surface doesn't change. I'd say that makes it
"the
same weight". I don't know if one can say the same about people in lighter
than
air craft.

Of course one can. In a lighter-than-air craft, the aircraft is still being
supported by the air underneath, which transfers that load to the Earth.

There are ways to nitpick the question, considering things like angular
momentum and inertia -- after all, it's true that since the air doesn't
provide a rigid connection, there are theoretical ways to demonstrate that
the Earth's total mass *does* change -- but then in those cases, anything
not firmly anchored to the planet could be considered not part of the total
mass of the planet, and thus the fact that the hypothetical people are in
the air is irrelevant. The Earth would have been "that much lighter" the
instant they were not firmly anchored to the planet (say, on the walk across
the ramp to the airplane).

Pete

"Earl Grieda" wrote in message
ink.net...
So, your guesstimate is that for every one person flying there is a
cummaltive 10 people in a terminal watching them depart or arrive. That,
to
me, seems like an inflated estimate.

It may be off, but I don't think it's by much. Here at SeaTac they have a
billboard with "airport statistics", and I was surprised at the large factor
between flying passengers and non-passengers in the airport. Non-passengers
beat out the passengers by a huge margin, and it was mostly friends and
family, rather than airport workers, that made up the difference.

I don't know if it was 10X, but it was some large (greater than 2) factor.

Not that whatever the factor is, it has anything to do with the original
question.

Pete