> If a person is, like, lifting off from the ground, and moving through the air in a controlled fashion driven by jet engines, isn't that pretty exactly flying?
It depends, are they reaching a height where the Wing-in-ground effect is negligible? If they have to stay below that, then no, not really flying. Unless you'd say that a hovercraft or ekranoplan also flies.
Or they could just be staying low because it might be insanely dangerous if the operator loses control at even slight altitude.
Where did you get this idea of flying? I wondered if I had a misconception there but any source I could quickly find on the web disagrees with the "can move with six degrees of freedom" definition and uses a definition like "doesn't touch ground or sea while moving through the air" instead. (Wikipedia on "Flight" / "Ekranoplan" / "Ground-effect vehicle", Merriam Webster on the word "Flight", and search for "what is flight" if that's not enough).
Up to a max altitude of 7 meters (at best), sure, an Ekranoplan has got all the degrees of freedom that other aircraft have, Which as was pointed out here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24629545 , is not 6
Imho no, an Ekranoplan does not fly freely. Nothing to do with a bogus DOF count though
The only reason an Ekranoplan can't fly higher is it's wings don't generate enough lift out of ground effect. Load a 747 up high enough, and it too wouldn't be able to get out of ground effect, but I'd still say it was flying.
You can't just say that "because it's a 747, it can fly":
A 747 with no fuel can't take off and fly.
A 747 with so much load that it never takes off at all, can't fly.
And IMHO, a 747 with just so much load that it can barely take off but can't get out of ground effect, also can't fly. It's borderline, but not really.
It's an academic distinction though. Give the 747 a while, and it will burn enough fuel to lighten and ascend.
It seems that you don't understand the implication of the DOF count. Flying means moving freely through the air. That, colloquially, means 6degree of freedom movement through space. It means looping a, it means barrel rolls, it means it can run circles and go backwards and move upside down. You know, flying.
Ekranoplans fly as much as an hovercraft does, which mean they don't. Case in point: they are unable to do 6dof movement. An ekranoplan doesn't do barrel rolls for example.
I guess I'm confused. If an aircraft can't go backwards or do a loop, does that mean it's not flying? Because as far as I know, every fixed wing aircraft is incapable of going in reverse, and most can't do a loop. Not trying to pick on your defenition of flight based on degrees of freedom, but that doesn't seem to match any definition of flight I've run across.
It depends, are they reaching a height where the Wing-in-ground effect is negligible? If they have to stay below that, then no, not really flying. Unless you'd say that a hovercraft or ekranoplan also flies.
Or they could just be staying low because it might be insanely dangerous if the operator loses control at even slight altitude.