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by mpweiher 1175 days ago
IIRC, that's what made jet planes possible in the first place. Jet turbines in general, and particularly the first ones, were horribly inefficient compared to props. However, they let you fly so much higher that it kind of canceled out.

The turbofan engines of today mitigate this inefficiency by, in essence, strapping a big prop in front of the turbine, except we call it a fan.

2 comments

I think it's called a fan and not a prop, because it's a fan and not a prop.

Props employ lift like a wing. Fans are screws.

It's really a spectrum where most props & fans actually posess at least a little of both properties, and there are some in the middle that had to simply be called propfans.

Turboprop is also a thing BTW.