The weight of the paint on a B747 is around 500kg.Arcadian wrote:No Pete, not a deliberate comedy routine, but you did mention human solid waste and bottom line in you post!! Having thought a bit more about weight saving perhaps Steve G could tell us the amount of paint used on a large aircraft.
It has been pretty well proven that modern polymer based paints on aircraft save more in protection, that what can be saved by reducing weight. It ends up costing more trying to control corrosion, than what can be saved in fuel costs.
Drag does not really come into the equation, as the paint is in what is termed the "boundary layer" of the airflow. Drag is more to do with the aerodynamic shape of any object moving in a fluid.
