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by nbadg 3581 days ago
The relationship between drag and lift is complicated. They're ultimately both the same phenomenon: pressure differentials introduced by dynamic fluid flow. You cannot have lift without drag, and you cannot have drag without lift [1].

That being said, this is fluid dynamics, where nothing is simple. Some of drag could be loosely described as friction, but not all of it. Think of what you feel while you're swimming, or sticking your hand out of a car window. It's like something is actively pushing against you, like you're catching a ball or something -- which you wouldn't normally call "friction". On top of this there are temperature effects, turbulence, ... and so on. And, most of these are actually at least somewhat coupled to each other.

Anyways, though at the end of the day it may be technically accurate (in certain contexts) to say that all of the power consumed at level flight is going to drag, it's also disingenuous; a bunch of that drag is the direct result of needing to generate lift to fight gravity.

[1] Admittedly this is a somewhat loose interpretation of the word "lift" but when you get down to the nitty gritty details like this I don't think "lift" is any more than a semantic construct to denote "useful drag". But the lift created to help control Apollo command capsules during reentry is a good example of this: by altering the angle of attack, thereby introducing highly asymmetric drag, the capsules "generated" lift to ease reentry angles.