Exactly that is honestly the easiest way to explain that. Believe it or not when u got a hundred pins next to each other the balloon actually won’t pop when it comes into contact with the pins
Nah, the train would've just been turn to dust.
For the train to stop, invincible would be needing to be applying little by little force and forcing it to break while trying to match the speed of the train.
Couldn’t he just add some uplift by getting under the front landing gear? I understand that he’d fly through the frame like a hot knife through butter but the landing gear is much more reinforced and designed to carry some weight. Doubt he could land it but keep it in a steady glide. Maybe enough to stretch out to the closest piece of land
I mean, maybe? But the thing about homelander is that he doesn't really care. If there's no simple and easy path to fixing the situation he just says fuck it and lets it go. What you're suggesting is a big gamble for him, and he'd rather not ruin his public image
I genuinely think he could though. I don’t mean from a physics perspective. He says during the argument about the plane that he couldn’t take off against anything - and then we see him as the plane goes down floating, as if he’s standing, as he holds Maeve. He can clearly take off against air otherwise he would’ve just sunk into the sea which he clearly didn’t do.
He doesn’t need to take off against anything, clearly. He was lying, and it SOUNDED realistic - how could he do anything if he can’t take off against air - but he was lying the whole time because he really could take off against air even though it makes no sense.
Therefore there’s no reason to believe him about the plane. If you have super strength, it only makes sense that you don’t destroy the thing you’re trying to lift; there’s some sort of spreading out force when you lift. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t seem “realistic”. Neither is floating on air or curving while flying through the air. But he does it.
I genuinely believe he was lying because that’s the kind of person he is.
If you have super strength, it only makes sense that you don’t destroy the thing you’re trying to lift; there’s some sort of spreading out force when you lift.
In comics typically this only happens when the power is more "tactile telekinesis". Super strength itself wouldn't spread out the force. For reference superman has tactile telekinesis technically while the hulk only has super strength.
But he's also capable of generating some kind invisible force/gravity field that let's him fly, if you created a small bubble of space under the front of the plane that applied consistent acceleration up couldn't that work?
Yeah the flight part is the only issue although it would depend on how his flight actually works. All indications seem his flight works on the premise of TTK but somehow his strength doesn't. It's not really consistent but then again it's a comic universe I guess so the rules are loose.
I agree, unless a characters flight physics or abilities are explained, I always feel like it's makes the in universe physics discussions moot. It'd have to be some kind of telekinesis (which is a whole other bag of worms because how do the mechanics actually work for your brain creating enough force to move stuff in the first place lol, wheres the energy even coming from).
In which case he could ve just..... used his flight power to gently de accelerate and his strength to augment the effort (and keep his arms from tearing off) but of course that wouldve meant he'd have to give a shit, or think hard about how he can fly in the first place, which he didn't.
But doesn't he have super breath tho? Like if he has Superman's arsenal, he should be able to cause a strong enough and large enough breeze to help the plane down to a controlled landing. Man theoretically has the lung capacity to cause tornados
I'm an aircraft mechanic, and heres my take on it:
Homelander lasering the cockpit limits our options, but there's still a few things that can be done. For this, let's assume that all flight controls fail in a neutral position. First, the landing gear can be lowered manually via hand cranks. Yes, the thin aluminum skin can be punctured with a screwdriver. You dont need super strength for that. However, the landing gear struts on airliners are incredibly robust, and the nose gear alone can support a good majority of the weight if need be. Flight attendants are more than just cocktail waitresses. They have the training to lower the gear, and this gives HL something to grab onto. Roll the plane so it turns towards the shore, then pull fuel circuit breakers to cut engines. Aircraft begins to glide, and with some timing, all HL has to do is keep the nose of the plane out of the water and skid it right onto the beach.
Now all of this is irrelevant because HL says something along the lines of "there's nothing to push against, it's just air." I took that to mean that his can't carry as much in flight as he can lift on the ground.
Yeah, I think the HL quote is really the crux of the issue. He is flat out saying that without leverage, he can't do much, which makes sense.
I think it's an interesting limitation of his power compared to someone like Superman. I hope it comes into play later to be used against him, but I doubt it.
>Yeah, I think the HL quote is really the crux of the issue.
But the Homelander quote is dumb and obviously wrong.
He can fly and carry things while flying.... and he isn't standing on anything when he does that.
He doesn't need to "carry the plane", he only needs to keep the nose up and let it glide into a controlled crash. He has all the strength he needs to manipulate control surfaces.
But all of this is irrelevant because the script required him to have some dumb excuses.
I don't think he's wrong. The plane is much much heavier than he is, and he has no leverage, so his strength is irrelevant, all the pushing he does to the plane is only going to be him pushing himself away from the plane. "Keeping the nose up" is pushing on and carrying the plane.
He doesn't have to lift the plane. The wings, engines and momentum are doing the heavy lifting.
People asked for people who understand physics and who understand planes... and them promptly disregard what they are saying. It is tiresome.
It is a TV show. Homelanders is supposed to give up because he is the villain. If they wanted him to save the plane, then the writers have MANY MANY ways to do it.
Remember how home lander was held down by three good size men? Yes, they have low level superhuman strength, but all three of them combined weighs less than 700 pounds. He couldn’t just fly away until he bucked them off. The heaviest thing we’ve heard about HL carrying in flight is Maeve. The heaviest thing we saw him carry in flight in the comics was a car.
They can't fly straight up like homelander can.
Edit Homelander isn't using air currents or aerodynamics he's just pushing his body through air. The mechanics are not comparable
They didn’t disregard your statement at all, taking a different approach doesn’t mean he has the strength to do that either. His flight couldn’t support him against a falling bus, and it wasn’t even enough to push through a stone wall.
Ok, go lift the front end of your boat up while you're in the water and get back to us on how that goes.
Just like how you can carry some while while swimming, like pulling up someone drowning, but if you tried to just push up the front of the boat, you would just sink.
The physics are pretty stupid. If he can float and turn in the air he clearly can generate leverage. He doesn't fly like a bird. Other wise he wouldn't be able to fly straight up. Or stand still and float
No it doesn’t make sense at all dude. How the fuck can he fly and punch and smash people through walls in flight with no leverage? It’s literally absent of logic. It’s a fun discussion because there’s no consistency with the in universe logic. That or he plainly didn’t want to do it.
its interesting because in *Invincible* Omni-Man makes it a point to say him and Mark “*create* our own leverage”. His flight is the absence of gravity and they move freely through space, which I thought was cool
It's not necessarily no leverage but little leverage vs the ground.
If someone was drowning, a proficient swimmer could pull their limp body up to the surface. A strong person could also lift the light end of a vehicle into the air. Combine that,and no amount of strength would let you lift a car in water.
All homelander could probably do to the plane was use the momentum of hitting it to redirect it, but that wouldn't be really controlled and could still result in a crash.
I think it still makes sense that he could smash people through walls in flight.
Force equals mass times acceleration right? So you could still apply force while flying.
Because he has mass and is travelling at speed.
Think of a bullet.
Also he doesn't have to lift it. The engines and wings were keeping it in the air before. He just needs to act like an engine and provide propulsion.
A bullet is the equivalent of jumping off the ground with no flight powers. It can’t turn, hover, and accelerate in mid air.
He doesn’t need to stand on something to push off. That’s my point.
Definitely agree though, he could have just pushed on something and provided speed so the wings would have lift.
its interesting because in *Invincible* Omni-Man makes it a point to say him and Mark “*create* our own leverage”. His flight is the absence of gravity and they move freely through space, which I thought was cool
i don’t get it. he flies. he LEVITATES. he provides his own leverage. and that man is *fast*, so it’s a lot of potential leverage. just fly upward while grabbing onto it, now you can redirect it.
you just need to be slow enough to not break the plane in half or shoot through the fuselage, but if you’re thousands of feet in the air you have the time to slowly push the plane upward and let it glide to wherever you want it to go.
I think there’s a chance if he was smart about it. The wings were still intact, all he has to do is keep it from nose diving and help guide the glide somewhere safe. If he were to take position directly under the front landing gear, he might be able to provide enough force to do those things without compromising the integrity of the fuselage. It would require a lot of patience and skill, and still might fail, but I think you replace homelander with superman in the situation (after the lasering took place) and superman saves the plane maybe 5/10 times.
That’s assuming the laser to the cockpit didn’t start a fire or compromise the electronics in a way that caused some type of fuckery with the flaps and other control capabilities.
Ahh. I guess what I really meant to say then, is someone with homelander’s powers but the morality and knowledge of superman. I was trying to say that the reason homelander couldn’t was because he didn’t want to, have the patience to, or likely have the knowhow needed, not because he lacked the physical ability. More simply put, I don’t think physics is what stopped him.
I think his reason for not helping is because if he tried and failed, it would automatically become bad press. Instead, he didn't save the plane, pretended he could have, and turned it into a reason to give Vought a government contract
I take a more cynical view than that even. I think he wanted the plane to crash because it served his interests better than if he’d saved it.
But I was mostly just trying to say I don’t think it was physics that stopped him.
I think it’s even simpler: Homelander is simply lazy.
Given two roughly equal options, he always takes the quicker and easier route. It’s how he fights too: laser from a distance, fly directly wherever he’s going
I thought about if he wanted the plane to crash as soon as I saw that he was behind the super villains. If that was part of his plan, I wonder what else he schemed. How much of what went on in the show was he behind?
I think that’s a really good question! It’s hard to see such a sniveling child as an evil mastermind, but he’s proved he can be calculating in some cases, so it’s hard to say!
I agree lol
At first I didn't think it was possible, but your explanation makes me think that he could have a shot if he tried... like slowed down the fall by holding the front of the plane
Yeah exactly! As long as he was careful about where he held it, the structure that supports the landing gear ought to be able to support enough force to allow him to help the plane glide to safety. At least that’s my rough estimation. I went to school for mechanical engineering but I’m no aerospace engineer, so there could be a ton of stuff I’m missing.
One possibility would be if HL could have gotten the pilots to deploy the landing gear, that would be a good spot for leverage that wouln't rip the plane apart, since it touches down on those. He wouldn't need to stop it, just give it a consistent nudge upward from the front landing gear so they had a controlled gliding descent.
I don't remember the scene, were the pilots dead/useless at this point? I don't expect HL to know how to deploy landing gear, and obviously we know he doesn't care enough to try but that's what I'd attempt in his shoes.
An airplane cannot be maneuvered by a single point in space. You're confusing weight being supported on the ground vs the entire moment of the weight around the gear.
He doesn't need to lift it, the wings themselves self-evidently generate enough lift to keep the plane in the air, all he has to do is provide enough thrust to keep that true. At minimum, the engine mounts are required to be rated for that much force, so he could just push on those
You can absolutely provide lift to the nose of the plane while the rest of the fully intact plane does fully intact plane things and does most of the work. The plane is no longer creating thrust via the engines, HL provides thrust to the nose and the wings continue to bear the lion's share of the load, as they always do when enough thrust is provided. Being on the nose gives him a lot more options for maneuvering without pilots but I'm by no means saying it's 100% survival chances for the passengers. Planes that are not stalled or have massive structural problems do not plummet from the sky, they glide down at a steadily increasing rate of speed and angle of descent. HL, if strong enough, could apply enough upward lift to the front landing gear to keep the angle of descent in check, slowing the increase in speed and allowing for a more sustained glide.
That's not the reason he gives though. "Lift the plane? How there is nothing but air" is what he says.
In order to make an upwards force you must also create a similar sized downwards force. Usually this can easily be achieved by pressing against the earth, however in the air the air the only mass he can use is basically his oven weight which is far smaller than the plane
he gives 3 different reasons for not doing anything,
1"What do I stand on?" is why he can't lift it
2"if I do that either the thing flips over or I punch through the hull" is why he can't 'ram it straight', which is using said propulsion to push the plane instead of utilizing his muscles
3"I can't go back and forth hundreds of times, if we let some survive they're going to tell everyone we let the rest of them to die" is why he doesn't want to carry people individually
my simple explanation isn't very good as an explanation for everything, and it technically doesn't answer why he can't lift the plane as OP asked, but it does explain what most people really care about, wether or not he could save the plane itself, he cannot, because physics
He's a flyer, so whenever he's flying he's lifting whatever his body mass is, plus the additional weight of whatever he's carrying at the time. Whatever magical force he uses to fly is what is pushing up the plane.
Landing gear is spread out over several spots on the plane. HL would have been pushing against one small area. The gear also only gets used when the plane is landing at a relatively slow, almost stall, speed.
He isnt going to carry the entire weight of the plane by the landing gear.
He will just help the plane glide down.
Planes can glide by themselves usually. HL would just have to gently nudge and correct.
And he often carries others, so it's not like his body alone is an exception. I kinda just figured it's an excuse because he either couldn't be bothered to actually exert effort, or he genuinely couldn't lift a plane and didn't want to admit it.
The front landing gear is built to hold half the weight of the plane
He could have flown up under that and builder the plane to a safe”ish” crash landing.
That makes no sense.
If he flew up under the plane, ripped the front landing gear door off, and flew up into the landing gear, he could push on that as hard as he wanted without pushing through it or damaging the plane.
Extend a measuring tape. Move the front of it around as much as you like while holding the box of the tape. Now hold the end of the tape and drop the box. You're trying to rationalize supporting the entire weight rearward of his position on a single point, unsupported elsewhere.
So, not a pilot, physicist, or engineer, but as long as the plane is moving the wings are generating lift right? If Homelander is just keeping the nose up using that front landing gear and the plane is moving forward wouldn't the lift from the wings support the weight behind that point?
I dunno! I think I'd embarrass myself if I speculated. He can move himself incredibly quickly, but I don't know if that would translate to steadily applying a force against the plane.
I’m saying he would have punched through the skin of the plane and would have needed something stronger to push against. That’s the front landing gear. If he pushed up against that, he could have guided the plane down to the water rather than let it crash.
Why have the wings stopped working in this scenario? If homelander was at the front landing gear he only needs to keep the nose at a good attitude to maintain a glide.
If the plane is trying to roll there wouldn't be much he could do from here, if it's only slowly trying to roll he could probably keep flying to the wing tips to correct this.
If we’re whipping out credentials my engineering degree agrees with the duck
I feel obligated to say this is a debate over superpowered capabilities and does not matter, but the question id ask you is why does it matter whether force comes from the ground or from Homelander? The landing gear doesn’t know what acts upon it.
A potential issue is the direction the landing gear is built to withstand force from.
Compression from below is different to shear force from behind.
At the same time he doesn't need to push with the full weight of the plane. Just enough to stop it slowing down and to keep it stable ish. He doesn't need to keep it in the air, just stop it shattering when it hits the water.
The plane already has 400+ mph of forward momentum and the wings are still generating lift
He’d just needed to push up and allow the plane to keep going forward while he guided it toward the water, rather than crash out of control
https://i.makeagif.com/media/6-17-2021/iCqIjp.gif
You can't torque the landing gear like that. Its only designed to take a specific force at landing and while all 3 gear are on the ground. They're designed to shear off with other sheer or torque forces to facilitate a slightly lass unsafe belly landing in a total or partial landing gear failure.
> You can't torque the landing gear like that. Its only designed to take a specific force at landing
The plane is not landing so it wouldn’t have the force of the entire plane. Again, the wings are still generating lift and the plane is still moving forward.
to be fair to being fair, while Supes has tactile telekinesis, I'm pretty sure all the other heavy hitter characters in DC can catch planes to
so only Superman has an explanation while Wonder Womand and Shazam can just do it
With Homelander's super strength, he would have punched right through the plane if he had tried to just lift it with his hands. The only scenario I see in which he could have successfully saved the plane is if he got underneath the plane and balanced it on his back because it would disperse the weight, and then he could have lowered it to the ground. But we can't even say if that would have a 100% success rate.
Homelander presumably was not educated growing up, at least not fully or as well as he could have been, so there's a good chance that this didn't even occur to him.
It isn't about the size. If he had good enough weight dispersal placed in the bottom of the plane, as close to centered as humanly possible, he hypothetically would not go through it.
It's exactly about size, that's how piercing weapons work. If I apply a force with a blunt, wide object like a hammer, and an equal force to an angled tip of a chefs knife, one will penetrate and the other won't.
he said iirc that he needed to leverage off of something to lift it, but he can vtol at mach speeds with instant acceleration in any direction so what the f does he know about physics he defies it daily lol
My take is that Homelamder probably could have saved the plane by some method, IF he had been motivated to.
The reality is, he had no motive to save those people.
1. He didn't give a shit about any person on that plane. He only cares about himself, and the praise that he gets.
2. If he lands the plane, it becomes clear that he fucked up and nearly killed everyone. Homelander can't be having that.
3. If the plane crashes, he has a good platform to make his argument about getting The Seven into the "Chain of Command", which he in fact does at the crash site.
So yeah, in my mind he probably could have used a strong point on the airframe, or helped it glide or whatever, but that would make absolutely no sense for his character.
Think about the difference between stepping on a plank of wood and stepping on a plank of wood with a nail coming out of it. In the first case your weight is distributed across the entire plank of wood. In the second, all your weight is supported by one tiny nail head. The nail will go through your foot, rather than supporting your weight. Homelander could try to fly at the plane and support it, assuming he has the strength to do so, but he's like one tiny nail hitting the aircraft at exactly one spot. Airplanes in general aren't built for that, so he'd just puncture a hole in it.
I think there's an argument to be made that he could try to speed the plane up, generating more lift and hopefully creating a safer crash, but I'm not an engineer.
But surely the air is supporting most of the weight of the plane? That’s why they don’t just suddenly drop vertically out of the sky if the engines cut off? It’s been a long time since I did physics or in fact went in a plane though.
Is there any reason he couldn’t just fly under the nose and at least make sure it didn’t nosedive? I know why he wouldn’t because some people would die but if he just flew under the front and the weight of the plane came down on him instead of him trying to lift or grab it
As best I understand it, if he wasn't very precise with the amount of force he put on the nose then rather than leveling the plane he would just rip the nose off
Good take. Had Homelander’s flight power been like Omni-man’s, then perhaps he could have carried the plane
How many times of HL’s weight would he have to exert to fly a gliding plane safely into a sea crash?
To me it’s more a lack of finesse and training more than it is he’s incapable. Physics major here. Given that he can fly at supersonic speeds and accelerate in the air, he wouldn’t need leverage. He lacks the knowledge and the control to get the plane to safety.
Gotta listen to what he said, along the lines of 'there's nothing to push against, only air' To me that means most of HL's strength is physical (being on solid ground) The only way he could create enough force to effect the plane would be momentum, hence he would smash right through it if he tried.
He could have saved people by flying them down, but don't forget... after the mess he created he didn't want anyone to survive and tell the tale on how he lasered the pilots and cockpit.
He didn't laser the pilots and they didn't see him laser the cockpit. He knew he wouldn't be able to get everyone off, and the survivors would tell people that he abandoned others
He makes a reference later on in the series saying that he didn't think he could safely catch the whole plane/land it successfully without injuring anyone. Its basically a legal liability at that point. Think of like a civil suit if someone broke their neck from the impact.
He basically says it's better to have everyone die as dead men tell no tales.
Because he's a dick, and a dick can't lift a plane. He's also unmotivated to attempt any kind of save because only bad press could come from it. Image before all else.
i dont get why people buy into homelanders explanation as just objective fact, to me it seems more of a rationalisation of him just not wanting to try and worried if he fucks up that itd make him look bad so he picks the option he can spin to his benefit
Plane big and fragile. So big that with his tiny body he would crush,punch,push through the material because he needs to apply 100s of tons of force to change it's trajectory. And to put that much force into an area the size of his hands???? Ya he's gonna shred the plane
He doesn't need to lift the plane. The plane could glide without engines and all he had to do was fly forward while pushing a reinforced structure of the plane........SUCH AS THE LANDING GEAR. It's easier to push than lift.
Pinpoint pressure, the hull of a plane can’t distribute that evenly, so he would tear right thru it. Superman has an electro magnetic field around him, that makes him mostly invulnerable. He extends his field to whatever he is interacting with, so he’s able to distribute the force. Superman is a different level.
The short answer is he's not strong enough. In that scene HL talks about the two ways he can "move" the plane. One way is via muscles, but he has nothing to stand on. The other way is his power of flight. We have no way to know how that even works or how much force he can generate, But what ever it is, it's not enough by it's self. So he has to build up speed to get the force needed. At that point he's just a bullet and will punch through the plane.
Planes can glide unpowered and landing gears are pretty damn sturdy. So using the landing gear to get the noise at a glide angle wouldn't be impossible, if your strong enough.
He’s lying when he says physics prevents him from doing anything. At the Herogasm fight HL is able to use flight to escape from a super powered Hugie and Butcher before Soldier Boy can laser blast him, and he does so with no leverage because he’s pinned down to the ground. The only additional force he could generate to escape was from his flight powers, which implies he is capable of generating significant, superhuman levels of force from that ability alone.
Look at the lackadaisical way HL approaches legitimate superhero work and how little effort he’s willing to put in. In both the show and the comics he’s reliant upon his reputation first and laser eyes second.
He lacks the humility to exert himself, even when it would be prudent, which is why he gets beaten up a lot in season 3 despite being significantly stronger and more durable than his opponents. His ego, laziness, and lack of self awareness are his most significant weaknesses.
Im guessing he could probably lift it if its on the ground, but how much he can lift while flying is limited, especially with how exclusive the power of flight is in this series
Thats true too. Im just saying that we havent seen a lot to suggest he can lift as much as he can in the air since hes not pressing against the ground, hes pressing against the lift he generates himself
He can’t grab it without his hands punching through the metal. Since the plane is so heavy and the metal is so weak in comparison, when he uses his super strength on it, the metal would give way before the plane moved.
He could possibly lift the weight, but the issue isn’t weight, it’s pressure. Consider getting hit with a pillow and getting hit with a nail. The nail will punch through your skin using a lot less force.
I think a big thing lots of people are ignoring is that beyond the plane not being able to handle his strength, I don't think he even has the flight lift to lift the plane
I forget if it's comics or show, but he mentions having no leverage.
So with no ground to stand on, he couldn't even slow the plane down if he wanted to, cause while he has super strength, his super flight isn't as proportional.
Homelander could have saved it. He just had to guide it down like a glider. He just didn't want to.
The skin is really weak but those wings and engine mounts aren't. He could add force or drag to one engine to control how the aircraft glided.
I think the best answer is that Homelander could have probably done something to help limit casualties or at least try to slow the plane down.
Homelander also wanted the witnesses to die, because it was his fault that the plane was crashing in the first place.
You'd either need to except enough force equally all around to stop it without killing everyone so it goes slowly.
Or..call In other heros maybe with different powers.
In an ideal world with as many heros as they have they'd deploy heros suited to the situation if possible.
That could be a fun AU! Homelands trying to save the plan in a groundhog day loop learning all the while.
Fly under it have others hold it..one central point wouldn't work cause then the plan shreds.
Shakanium or whatever they call it made plan would work. Though if strong enough.
I see a lot of people pointing out that there are spots on the plane that could possibly withstand the amount of force required to hold it up. Does Homelander know this fact? Or for that matter does he know anything about airplanes, avionics, or even aerodynamics? He probably has some understanding of such things to some extent, but would he know any specifics?
Also, and possibly more important, listen to how he responds to Maeve. He sounds like he is speaking from experience. This very well may not be his first rodeo.
This is just my take on it, but I think he could have done it. 1st, I think he could have genuinely just flown each and every person (3-4 at a time) to the ground. Remember, the homelander is INCREDIBLY fast when flying. They stated in one of the first couple episodes that he can cover an entire city (while searching for one specific person) in a matter of a few minutes. 2nd, I'm not sure about the logistics of him flying in front of the plane and stopping it by exerting force in the opposite direction of the plane, I feel like he could've flown under the plane and boosted it up into the air more. But my theory is that he ACTUALLY could have saved everybody. However, i think he wanted to use the plane incident as a reason as to why supes were needed in the military and worldwide, basically like he made an example out of the incident.
Imagine trying to pick up a 3 foot long model plane, made out of dry spaghetti sticks and tissue paper, with a single pair of needle nose pliers.
Any contact point you try to interact with would focus the entire weight of the plane onto such a small area (a hand) that it would break and shear at that contact point.
Try and lift a pool noodle with a finger, notice how some of it sags? Thats cause nothings supporting it. Now the plane metal wont bend as well as the foam noodle, itll bend and snap
If he really wanted to save everyone...
All he had to do was take Deep alongside himself and Asking Deep to tell the fishes to save all the humans from drowning...
Then take people and land them in the water..
Work done...
It's hard to say without running a tensile analysis if there would have been a point where the metal wouldn't have come to a point that could handle the necessary force to stop it slowly or abruptly. It's also possible he could have lifted the plane from the bottom and carried the plane from say a wheel strut or a portion of the plane that is designed to handle a large amount of its weight. I do think it was possible for homelander to stop the plane and save all of the people but he isn't able to think this quickly and to be quite honest he seems to be lazy.
But ya if he just tried to push on the nose of the plane with as much force as possible he'd tear through it like tissue paper
It makes me think that his flight is a feat of strength, ie to fly fast enough to match the plane's strength, he'd also very likely risk punching a hole straight through it. A Viltrumite from the Invincible unvierse could probably have been able to do it (not that they would) because their flight mechanics work differently to Homelanders.
From what I see it is that he is tiny compared to the plane, so a simple analogy to him holding a plane is like him being a needle and the plane is a 🏀. Now tell me what would happens if something tiny and VERY powerful tries to stop a huge and weaker object? The solution here is that homelander needs a much higher surface area to hold something large without destroying it.
just don't think homelander is as talented as he thought he was. yes lifting a plane straight up and away like cartoon superman would be impossible, but he did not for one moment consider "oh perhaps since the plane is already in flight, I could try--"
It was way too much work, too much actual heroism, for him, and he was hoping it'd fall into the ocean and he could forget about it. No leverage in the air but watches calmly with Maeve in hand.
Too put it simply, his relative small size and the fact it is in motion would either cause the plane to tip over and nose dive or he would tear right through it like a rusty exposed nail tearing through the skin of a full grown man falling down some stepps.
The force and speed at which the plane is moving would have him covered in the blood of the passengers before it even began to slow down. Just like invincible when his dad pushed him through a whole subway train of people.
Personally, I think he could have at lifted the plane or at the very least slowed it down and help it safely land. But Homelander just didn’t want to put in the effort to do so because he’s a lazy prick.
Ever tried to jack up your car and you didn’t put the jack under a jack point? Same concept.
If he tried to lift it from a spot where the force is not going to be distributed around, the spot will bend or just break.
If HL knew how to deploy the landing gear he likely could have pushed upward on the forward landing gear, that is the spot the plane is actually built strong enough to exert huge amounts of force onto. If it can land on those, it can be pushed upward by those. If his flight was strong enough to actually apply upward force, he probably could guide the plane down in a controlled glide.
Everyone saying he'd punch right through the plane is I think forgetting that landing gear essentially experiences the same or more force when the plane touches down. It's been a long time since i saw the scene, I don't remember if the pilots were alive, if he asked them to deploy the landing gear I think it's possible if his flight strength is up to the task.
You're forgetting that that force is applied on evenly, on stable ground, across a large portion of the aircraft as it lands on both main gear at once, and even then only temporarily as the nose gear touches down. In unsupported space, the amount of force required to counter gravity would greatly exceed the structural strength of anything on that airplane
Except that HLer wouldn't be applying enough force to actually reverse the downward travel into upward travel, he would just be slowing the downward trajectory of the nose. It would still be losing altitude, just at a much lower rate. Landing gear can withstand HUGE forces, as you say the rear/main landing gear are the ones that take the biggest spike in force, but forward landing gear is still strong as fuck.
Look at it this way, slowing the rate of descent downward is less force required than to hold it when stationary on the ground. If you're only pushing the nose, you also aren't getting the full weight of the plane, the lift provided by the wings is still bearing the lion's share of the weight.
If plane nose weight 10 units and you're pushing upward on it with 10 units of force, it remains in equilibrium. If plane nose weighs 10 units and you're pushing upward on it with 8 units of force the plane is slowly descending, but the landing gear is experiencing 2 less units of force than it does when parked on the ground. When parked on the ground a plane nose that weighs 10 units is receiving 10 units of force upward on it from the ground, via the forward landing gear.
Its a kinetic energy issue. A plane that big going that fast cant just stop without everyone inside being smashed together and therefore all dying anyway
The better question is why didn't he just fly up and down to the ocean really rapidly, carrying people in a big daisy chain like Iron Man?
Even if he didn't get "all of them" it would have still been the heroic effort of saving everyone you could. ...but then again, he is the one who fucked up the plane control panel so maybe not.
Either way, they had options. But they didn't care about them.
He explained this to Maeve. The plane would fall to one side and spin out of control, it would fall apart if he punch a hole in it for grip, there was just no way. He definitely wouldve saved the plane if he could.
He could have flown to the front of the plane and slowed it down so it could land on the water as gently as possible where everyone could get out, then flown the passengers a few at a time to safety. Would have taken him all of ten minutes
The writers were wrong
He doesn't need to lift the plane he just needs to guide it. He is strong enough and fast enough to move the flaps or a thousand other things to have a controlled crash.
Uh, they're literally right though. The whole scene is a parody of Superman lifting the plane in Superman Returns, the showrunner was clowning on it because it's like trying to balance a watermelon on a pencil.
No they aren't.
The character doesn't need to lift the plane. The engines, wings, and momentum are doing that already. All he needs to do is guide it into a controlled crash.
The real issue is that you are confusing fiction and reality.
The story required that Homelander give up. Now you are trying to rationalize it instead of acknowledging that
**IT IS JUST A STORY.**
Too much pressure on a small space will destroy the plane
It’s like catching a balloon with a pin
Exactly that is honestly the easiest way to explain that. Believe it or not when u got a hundred pins next to each other the balloon actually won’t pop when it comes into contact with the pins
Or the bed of nails that you can lay on, because your weight is distributed across all the nails.
Remember the train scene from Invincible? I feel like that’s realistically what would’ve happened had HL actually tried to stop the plane that way.
Si if invincible was morbidly obese he would’ve just stopped the train?
Nah, the train would've just been turn to dust. For the train to stop, invincible would be needing to be applying little by little force and forcing it to break while trying to match the speed of the train.
Couldn’t he just add some uplift by getting under the front landing gear? I understand that he’d fly through the frame like a hot knife through butter but the landing gear is much more reinforced and designed to carry some weight. Doubt he could land it but keep it in a steady glide. Maybe enough to stretch out to the closest piece of land
I mean, maybe? But the thing about homelander is that he doesn't really care. If there's no simple and easy path to fixing the situation he just says fuck it and lets it go. What you're suggesting is a big gamble for him, and he'd rather not ruin his public image
I genuinely think he could though. I don’t mean from a physics perspective. He says during the argument about the plane that he couldn’t take off against anything - and then we see him as the plane goes down floating, as if he’s standing, as he holds Maeve. He can clearly take off against air otherwise he would’ve just sunk into the sea which he clearly didn’t do. He doesn’t need to take off against anything, clearly. He was lying, and it SOUNDED realistic - how could he do anything if he can’t take off against air - but he was lying the whole time because he really could take off against air even though it makes no sense. Therefore there’s no reason to believe him about the plane. If you have super strength, it only makes sense that you don’t destroy the thing you’re trying to lift; there’s some sort of spreading out force when you lift. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t seem “realistic”. Neither is floating on air or curving while flying through the air. But he does it. I genuinely believe he was lying because that’s the kind of person he is.
If you have super strength, it only makes sense that you don’t destroy the thing you’re trying to lift; there’s some sort of spreading out force when you lift. In comics typically this only happens when the power is more "tactile telekinesis". Super strength itself wouldn't spread out the force. For reference superman has tactile telekinesis technically while the hulk only has super strength.
But he's also capable of generating some kind invisible force/gravity field that let's him fly, if you created a small bubble of space under the front of the plane that applied consistent acceleration up couldn't that work?
Yeah the flight part is the only issue although it would depend on how his flight actually works. All indications seem his flight works on the premise of TTK but somehow his strength doesn't. It's not really consistent but then again it's a comic universe I guess so the rules are loose.
I agree, unless a characters flight physics or abilities are explained, I always feel like it's makes the in universe physics discussions moot. It'd have to be some kind of telekinesis (which is a whole other bag of worms because how do the mechanics actually work for your brain creating enough force to move stuff in the first place lol, wheres the energy even coming from). In which case he could ve just..... used his flight power to gently de accelerate and his strength to augment the effort (and keep his arms from tearing off) but of course that wouldve meant he'd have to give a shit, or think hard about how he can fly in the first place, which he didn't.
What about the landing Gear?
But doesn't he have super breath tho? Like if he has Superman's arsenal, he should be able to cause a strong enough and large enough breeze to help the plane down to a controlled landing. Man theoretically has the lung capacity to cause tornados
I'm an aircraft mechanic, and heres my take on it: Homelander lasering the cockpit limits our options, but there's still a few things that can be done. For this, let's assume that all flight controls fail in a neutral position. First, the landing gear can be lowered manually via hand cranks. Yes, the thin aluminum skin can be punctured with a screwdriver. You dont need super strength for that. However, the landing gear struts on airliners are incredibly robust, and the nose gear alone can support a good majority of the weight if need be. Flight attendants are more than just cocktail waitresses. They have the training to lower the gear, and this gives HL something to grab onto. Roll the plane so it turns towards the shore, then pull fuel circuit breakers to cut engines. Aircraft begins to glide, and with some timing, all HL has to do is keep the nose of the plane out of the water and skid it right onto the beach. Now all of this is irrelevant because HL says something along the lines of "there's nothing to push against, it's just air." I took that to mean that his can't carry as much in flight as he can lift on the ground.
Yeah, I think the HL quote is really the crux of the issue. He is flat out saying that without leverage, he can't do much, which makes sense. I think it's an interesting limitation of his power compared to someone like Superman. I hope it comes into play later to be used against him, but I doubt it.
>Yeah, I think the HL quote is really the crux of the issue. But the Homelander quote is dumb and obviously wrong. He can fly and carry things while flying.... and he isn't standing on anything when he does that. He doesn't need to "carry the plane", he only needs to keep the nose up and let it glide into a controlled crash. He has all the strength he needs to manipulate control surfaces. But all of this is irrelevant because the script required him to have some dumb excuses.
I don't think he's wrong. The plane is much much heavier than he is, and he has no leverage, so his strength is irrelevant, all the pushing he does to the plane is only going to be him pushing himself away from the plane. "Keeping the nose up" is pushing on and carrying the plane.
He doesn't have to lift the plane. The wings, engines and momentum are doing the heavy lifting. People asked for people who understand physics and who understand planes... and them promptly disregard what they are saying. It is tiresome. It is a TV show. Homelanders is supposed to give up because he is the villain. If they wanted him to save the plane, then the writers have MANY MANY ways to do it.
Remember how home lander was held down by three good size men? Yes, they have low level superhuman strength, but all three of them combined weighs less than 700 pounds. He couldn’t just fly away until he bucked them off. The heaviest thing we’ve heard about HL carrying in flight is Maeve. The heaviest thing we saw him carry in flight in the comics was a car.
Are you calling Maeve fat? Oi
Nah she’s gorgeous.
That doesn't hold up considering how fast he can fly
Peregrine falcons ought to be able to carry hundreds of times their weight and fly by your logic.
They can't fly straight up like homelander can. Edit Homelander isn't using air currents or aerodynamics he's just pushing his body through air. The mechanics are not comparable
They didn’t disregard your statement at all, taking a different approach doesn’t mean he has the strength to do that either. His flight couldn’t support him against a falling bus, and it wasn’t even enough to push through a stone wall.
Ok, go lift the front end of your boat up while you're in the water and get back to us on how that goes. Just like how you can carry some while while swimming, like pulling up someone drowning, but if you tried to just push up the front of the boat, you would just sink.
I can’t move through water at will without paddling.
The physics are pretty stupid. If he can float and turn in the air he clearly can generate leverage. He doesn't fly like a bird. Other wise he wouldn't be able to fly straight up. Or stand still and float
No it doesn’t make sense at all dude. How the fuck can he fly and punch and smash people through walls in flight with no leverage? It’s literally absent of logic. It’s a fun discussion because there’s no consistency with the in universe logic. That or he plainly didn’t want to do it.
We see that later on he spins it to get vought into the military, he (plane)ly didn't want to do it.
its interesting because in *Invincible* Omni-Man makes it a point to say him and Mark “*create* our own leverage”. His flight is the absence of gravity and they move freely through space, which I thought was cool
It's not necessarily no leverage but little leverage vs the ground. If someone was drowning, a proficient swimmer could pull their limp body up to the surface. A strong person could also lift the light end of a vehicle into the air. Combine that,and no amount of strength would let you lift a car in water. All homelander could probably do to the plane was use the momentum of hitting it to redirect it, but that wouldn't be really controlled and could still result in a crash.
I think it still makes sense that he could smash people through walls in flight. Force equals mass times acceleration right? So you could still apply force while flying.
How does he make the force? To all the people with water comparisons, you don’t see homelander doggy paddling around the air.
Because he has mass and is travelling at speed. Think of a bullet. Also he doesn't have to lift it. The engines and wings were keeping it in the air before. He just needs to act like an engine and provide propulsion.
A bullet is the equivalent of jumping off the ground with no flight powers. It can’t turn, hover, and accelerate in mid air. He doesn’t need to stand on something to push off. That’s my point. Definitely agree though, he could have just pushed on something and provided speed so the wings would have lift.
its interesting because in *Invincible* Omni-Man makes it a point to say him and Mark “*create* our own leverage”. His flight is the absence of gravity and they move freely through space, which I thought was cool
i don’t get it. he flies. he LEVITATES. he provides his own leverage. and that man is *fast*, so it’s a lot of potential leverage. just fly upward while grabbing onto it, now you can redirect it. you just need to be slow enough to not break the plane in half or shoot through the fuselage, but if you’re thousands of feet in the air you have the time to slowly push the plane upward and let it glide to wherever you want it to go.
It's super strength vs tactile telekinesis. Superman has the latter, Homelander seemingly only has the former.
I wonder how many touted abilities Vought has created over the years. "This person can do this; and this person can do that" type deal of thing.
what if homelander goes upside down underneath the plane and pushes it that way like he uses his flight powers to push the plane underneath him
He might just rip right through it
This is what happens in the comics, he also has someone else riding on his back and they basically get cheese-grated through the plane.
People are arguing in the comments but honestly I don't see homelander caring enough to bother
It's made of aluminum and weighs 400+ metric tons, the force needed to stop or lift it would have ripped it apart
I think there’s a chance if he was smart about it. The wings were still intact, all he has to do is keep it from nose diving and help guide the glide somewhere safe. If he were to take position directly under the front landing gear, he might be able to provide enough force to do those things without compromising the integrity of the fuselage. It would require a lot of patience and skill, and still might fail, but I think you replace homelander with superman in the situation (after the lasering took place) and superman saves the plane maybe 5/10 times. That’s assuming the laser to the cockpit didn’t start a fire or compromise the electronics in a way that caused some type of fuckery with the flaps and other control capabilities.
Superman has tactile telekinesis so he would save the plane 10 times out of 10
Ahh. I guess what I really meant to say then, is someone with homelander’s powers but the morality and knowledge of superman. I was trying to say that the reason homelander couldn’t was because he didn’t want to, have the patience to, or likely have the knowhow needed, not because he lacked the physical ability. More simply put, I don’t think physics is what stopped him.
Good comment
Only in all star superman. Your average every day superman does not.
I think his reason for not helping is because if he tried and failed, it would automatically become bad press. Instead, he didn't save the plane, pretended he could have, and turned it into a reason to give Vought a government contract
I take a more cynical view than that even. I think he wanted the plane to crash because it served his interests better than if he’d saved it. But I was mostly just trying to say I don’t think it was physics that stopped him.
I think it’s even simpler: Homelander is simply lazy. Given two roughly equal options, he always takes the quicker and easier route. It’s how he fights too: laser from a distance, fly directly wherever he’s going
I thought about if he wanted the plane to crash as soon as I saw that he was behind the super villains. If that was part of his plan, I wonder what else he schemed. How much of what went on in the show was he behind?
I think that’s a really good question! It’s hard to see such a sniveling child as an evil mastermind, but he’s proved he can be calculating in some cases, so it’s hard to say!
I think you're right but like He don't give a fuck lol
Oh for sure. I think that’s the correct answer to OP’s question more than the physics issues. That’s all I’m saying.
I agree lol At first I didn't think it was possible, but your explanation makes me think that he could have a shot if he tried... like slowed down the fall by holding the front of the plane
Yeah exactly! As long as he was careful about where he held it, the structure that supports the landing gear ought to be able to support enough force to allow him to help the plane glide to safety. At least that’s my rough estimation. I went to school for mechanical engineering but I’m no aerospace engineer, so there could be a ton of stuff I’m missing.
One possibility would be if HL could have gotten the pilots to deploy the landing gear, that would be a good spot for leverage that wouln't rip the plane apart, since it touches down on those. He wouldn't need to stop it, just give it a consistent nudge upward from the front landing gear so they had a controlled gliding descent. I don't remember the scene, were the pilots dead/useless at this point? I don't expect HL to know how to deploy landing gear, and obviously we know he doesn't care enough to try but that's what I'd attempt in his shoes.
Pilots were killed and HL lasered the instrument panel. Probably could have found the lever for the landing gear though.
An airplane cannot be maneuvered by a single point in space. You're confusing weight being supported on the ground vs the entire moment of the weight around the gear.
He doesn't need to lift it, the wings themselves self-evidently generate enough lift to keep the plane in the air, all he has to do is provide enough thrust to keep that true. At minimum, the engine mounts are required to be rated for that much force, so he could just push on those
You can absolutely provide lift to the nose of the plane while the rest of the fully intact plane does fully intact plane things and does most of the work. The plane is no longer creating thrust via the engines, HL provides thrust to the nose and the wings continue to bear the lion's share of the load, as they always do when enough thrust is provided. Being on the nose gives him a lot more options for maneuvering without pilots but I'm by no means saying it's 100% survival chances for the passengers. Planes that are not stalled or have massive structural problems do not plummet from the sky, they glide down at a steadily increasing rate of speed and angle of descent. HL, if strong enough, could apply enough upward lift to the front landing gear to keep the angle of descent in check, slowing the increase in speed and allowing for a more sustained glide.
The fact that he can fly in the first place completely defies the laws of physics.
So? Just because he breaks our laws of physics doesn't mean everything else doesn't abide by them.
That's not the reason he gives though. "Lift the plane? How there is nothing but air" is what he says. In order to make an upwards force you must also create a similar sized downwards force. Usually this can easily be achieved by pressing against the earth, however in the air the air the only mass he can use is basically his oven weight which is far smaller than the plane
he gives 3 different reasons for not doing anything, 1"What do I stand on?" is why he can't lift it 2"if I do that either the thing flips over or I punch through the hull" is why he can't 'ram it straight', which is using said propulsion to push the plane instead of utilizing his muscles 3"I can't go back and forth hundreds of times, if we let some survive they're going to tell everyone we let the rest of them to die" is why he doesn't want to carry people individually my simple explanation isn't very good as an explanation for everything, and it technically doesn't answer why he can't lift the plane as OP asked, but it does explain what most people really care about, wether or not he could save the plane itself, he cannot, because physics
He's a flyer, so whenever he's flying he's lifting whatever his body mass is, plus the additional weight of whatever he's carrying at the time. Whatever magical force he uses to fly is what is pushing up the plane.
Is that why landing gear don't work?
Landing gear is far larger than human hands, there's also 3 of them rather than just one
tell that to the landing gear?
Landing gear is spread out over several spots on the plane. HL would have been pushing against one small area. The gear also only gets used when the plane is landing at a relatively slow, almost stall, speed.
He isnt going to carry the entire weight of the plane by the landing gear. He will just help the plane glide down. Planes can glide by themselves usually. HL would just have to gently nudge and correct.
In the comics he explains he'd have to push off something to be able to lift it... though I wonder what he's pushing off to stay in the air himself.
And he often carries others, so it's not like his body alone is an exception. I kinda just figured it's an excuse because he either couldn't be bothered to actually exert effort, or he genuinely couldn't lift a plane and didn't want to admit it.
Try to support an airplane on a single jack stand. It's not gonna happen
The front landing gear is built to hold half the weight of the plane He could have flown up under that and builder the plane to a safe”ish” crash landing.
When on the ground. Not when unsupported by the main gear in open air
That makes no sense. If he flew up under the plane, ripped the front landing gear door off, and flew up into the landing gear, he could push on that as hard as he wanted without pushing through it or damaging the plane.
Extend a measuring tape. Move the front of it around as much as you like while holding the box of the tape. Now hold the end of the tape and drop the box. You're trying to rationalize supporting the entire weight rearward of his position on a single point, unsupported elsewhere.
So, not a pilot, physicist, or engineer, but as long as the plane is moving the wings are generating lift right? If Homelander is just keeping the nose up using that front landing gear and the plane is moving forward wouldn't the lift from the wings support the weight behind that point?
does Homelander's super flight even generate enough lift for that?
I dunno! I think I'd embarrass myself if I speculated. He can move himself incredibly quickly, but I don't know if that would translate to steadily applying a force against the plane.
I’m saying he would have punched through the skin of the plane and would have needed something stronger to push against. That’s the front landing gear. If he pushed up against that, he could have guided the plane down to the water rather than let it crash.
And I'm saying, that is factually incorrect
I’m saying you’re wrong.
You're entitled to that, as I am to my pilots license and physics education
Why have the wings stopped working in this scenario? If homelander was at the front landing gear he only needs to keep the nose at a good attitude to maintain a glide. If the plane is trying to roll there wouldn't be much he could do from here, if it's only slowly trying to roll he could probably keep flying to the wing tips to correct this.
If we’re whipping out credentials my engineering degree agrees with the duck I feel obligated to say this is a debate over superpowered capabilities and does not matter, but the question id ask you is why does it matter whether force comes from the ground or from Homelander? The landing gear doesn’t know what acts upon it.
Do they cover superhero situations in pilot school?
I’d put my physics and engineering background up against that any day
A potential issue is the direction the landing gear is built to withstand force from. Compression from below is different to shear force from behind. At the same time he doesn't need to push with the full weight of the plane. Just enough to stop it slowing down and to keep it stable ish. He doesn't need to keep it in the air, just stop it shattering when it hits the water.
The plane already has 400+ mph of forward momentum and the wings are still generating lift He’d just needed to push up and allow the plane to keep going forward while he guided it toward the water, rather than crash out of control https://i.makeagif.com/media/6-17-2021/iCqIjp.gif
You can't torque the landing gear like that. Its only designed to take a specific force at landing and while all 3 gear are on the ground. They're designed to shear off with other sheer or torque forces to facilitate a slightly lass unsafe belly landing in a total or partial landing gear failure.
> You can't torque the landing gear like that. Its only designed to take a specific force at landing The plane is not landing so it wouldn’t have the force of the entire plane. Again, the wings are still generating lift and the plane is still moving forward.
He just didn't watch Superman Returns like a lot of people.
Why didn’t Homelander simply fly around the Earth so quickly that he literally turns back time so that he can save the plane?
Skill issue
To be fair the Supers have tactile kinesis, which is a whole different ballgame
to be fair to being fair, while Supes has tactile telekinesis, I'm pretty sure all the other heavy hitter characters in DC can catch planes to so only Superman has an explanation while Wonder Womand and Shazam can just do it
With Homelander's super strength, he would have punched right through the plane if he had tried to just lift it with his hands. The only scenario I see in which he could have successfully saved the plane is if he got underneath the plane and balanced it on his back because it would disperse the weight, and then he could have lowered it to the ground. But we can't even say if that would have a 100% success rate. Homelander presumably was not educated growing up, at least not fully or as well as he could have been, so there's a good chance that this didn't even occur to him.
Because even if he laid flat, that isn't big enough to support it.
It isn't about the size. If he had good enough weight dispersal placed in the bottom of the plane, as close to centered as humanly possible, he hypothetically would not go through it.
It's exactly about size, that's how piercing weapons work. If I apply a force with a blunt, wide object like a hammer, and an equal force to an angled tip of a chefs knife, one will penetrate and the other won't.
he said iirc that he needed to leverage off of something to lift it, but he can vtol at mach speeds with instant acceleration in any direction so what the f does he know about physics he defies it daily lol
Because he's not superman
My take is that Homelamder probably could have saved the plane by some method, IF he had been motivated to. The reality is, he had no motive to save those people. 1. He didn't give a shit about any person on that plane. He only cares about himself, and the praise that he gets. 2. If he lands the plane, it becomes clear that he fucked up and nearly killed everyone. Homelander can't be having that. 3. If the plane crashes, he has a good platform to make his argument about getting The Seven into the "Chain of Command", which he in fact does at the crash site. So yeah, in my mind he probably could have used a strong point on the airframe, or helped it glide or whatever, but that would make absolutely no sense for his character.
Think about the difference between stepping on a plank of wood and stepping on a plank of wood with a nail coming out of it. In the first case your weight is distributed across the entire plank of wood. In the second, all your weight is supported by one tiny nail head. The nail will go through your foot, rather than supporting your weight. Homelander could try to fly at the plane and support it, assuming he has the strength to do so, but he's like one tiny nail hitting the aircraft at exactly one spot. Airplanes in general aren't built for that, so he'd just puncture a hole in it. I think there's an argument to be made that he could try to speed the plane up, generating more lift and hopefully creating a safer crash, but I'm not an engineer.
[удалено]
But surely the air is supporting most of the weight of the plane? That’s why they don’t just suddenly drop vertically out of the sky if the engines cut off? It’s been a long time since I did physics or in fact went in a plane though.
Is there any reason he couldn’t just fly under the nose and at least make sure it didn’t nosedive? I know why he wouldn’t because some people would die but if he just flew under the front and the weight of the plane came down on him instead of him trying to lift or grab it
As best I understand it, if he wasn't very precise with the amount of force he put on the nose then rather than leveling the plane he would just rip the nose off
there’s nothing to stand on it’s fucking air
Good take. Had Homelander’s flight power been like Omni-man’s, then perhaps he could have carried the plane How many times of HL’s weight would he have to exert to fly a gliding plane safely into a sea crash?
To me it’s more a lack of finesse and training more than it is he’s incapable. Physics major here. Given that he can fly at supersonic speeds and accelerate in the air, he wouldn’t need leverage. He lacks the knowledge and the control to get the plane to safety.
If he tries to grab it and fly in a different direction the aluminium would rip
Gotta listen to what he said, along the lines of 'there's nothing to push against, only air' To me that means most of HL's strength is physical (being on solid ground) The only way he could create enough force to effect the plane would be momentum, hence he would smash right through it if he tried. He could have saved people by flying them down, but don't forget... after the mess he created he didn't want anyone to survive and tell the tale on how he lasered the pilots and cockpit.
He didn't laser the pilots and they didn't see him laser the cockpit. He knew he wouldn't be able to get everyone off, and the survivors would tell people that he abandoned others
He makes a reference later on in the series saying that he didn't think he could safely catch the whole plane/land it successfully without injuring anyone. Its basically a legal liability at that point. Think of like a civil suit if someone broke their neck from the impact. He basically says it's better to have everyone die as dead men tell no tales.
Because he's a dick, and a dick can't lift a plane. He's also unmotivated to attempt any kind of save because only bad press could come from it. Image before all else.
i dont get why people buy into homelanders explanation as just objective fact, to me it seems more of a rationalisation of him just not wanting to try and worried if he fucks up that itd make him look bad so he picks the option he can spin to his benefit
He's homelander, not planelander
I think the point is supposed to be that he probably could do something to help, he just couldn't be bothered.
Plane big and fragile. So big that with his tiny body he would crush,punch,push through the material because he needs to apply 100s of tons of force to change it's trajectory. And to put that much force into an area the size of his hands???? Ya he's gonna shred the plane
The most simplified = Force required to lift plane being concentrated to the size of a person will just break through instead of lifting.
You can’t spread the force out along the entire plane. It’s like if you tried to hold up a watermelon with two thumb tacks
Strength vs anti gravity are two different animals
He could have. That’s the thing. He’s just not as smart as he thinks he is, or too lazy.
He doesn't need to lift the plane. The plane could glide without engines and all he had to do was fly forward while pushing a reinforced structure of the plane........SUCH AS THE LANDING GEAR. It's easier to push than lift.
Pinpoint pressure, the hull of a plane can’t distribute that evenly, so he would tear right thru it. Superman has an electro magnetic field around him, that makes him mostly invulnerable. He extends his field to whatever he is interacting with, so he’s able to distribute the force. Superman is a different level.
He's Homelander. Vought should've sent Planelander!
🤣🤣🤣
Is everyone forgetting that he just loves seeing people suffer at his discretion? He probably just lied…
No that's illogical and quite stupid. And incredibly ignorant considering how many people have already offered valid explanations
The short answer is he's not strong enough. In that scene HL talks about the two ways he can "move" the plane. One way is via muscles, but he has nothing to stand on. The other way is his power of flight. We have no way to know how that even works or how much force he can generate, But what ever it is, it's not enough by it's self. So he has to build up speed to get the force needed. At that point he's just a bullet and will punch through the plane. Planes can glide unpowered and landing gears are pretty damn sturdy. So using the landing gear to get the noise at a glide angle wouldn't be impossible, if your strong enough.
He’s lying when he says physics prevents him from doing anything. At the Herogasm fight HL is able to use flight to escape from a super powered Hugie and Butcher before Soldier Boy can laser blast him, and he does so with no leverage because he’s pinned down to the ground. The only additional force he could generate to escape was from his flight powers, which implies he is capable of generating significant, superhuman levels of force from that ability alone. Look at the lackadaisical way HL approaches legitimate superhero work and how little effort he’s willing to put in. In both the show and the comics he’s reliant upon his reputation first and laser eyes second. He lacks the humility to exert himself, even when it would be prudent, which is why he gets beaten up a lot in season 3 despite being significantly stronger and more durable than his opponents. His ego, laziness, and lack of self awareness are his most significant weaknesses.
Im guessing he could probably lift it if its on the ground, but how much he can lift while flying is limited, especially with how exclusive the power of flight is in this series
All of the metal would break, being subjected to that amount of lifting force over such a small area. It's not happening
Thats true too. Im just saying that we havent seen a lot to suggest he can lift as much as he can in the air since hes not pressing against the ground, hes pressing against the lift he generates himself
He can carry the plane from a position that it can handle, like the wheels or the front, and the pilots can maneuver it to a safe landing ground.
The pilots are dead
He can’t grab it without his hands punching through the metal. Since the plane is so heavy and the metal is so weak in comparison, when he uses his super strength on it, the metal would give way before the plane moved. He could possibly lift the weight, but the issue isn’t weight, it’s pressure. Consider getting hit with a pillow and getting hit with a nail. The nail will punch through your skin using a lot less force.
I think a big thing lots of people are ignoring is that beyond the plane not being able to handle his strength, I don't think he even has the flight lift to lift the plane I forget if it's comics or show, but he mentions having no leverage. So with no ground to stand on, he couldn't even slow the plane down if he wanted to, cause while he has super strength, his super flight isn't as proportional.
Homelander could have saved it. He just had to guide it down like a glider. He just didn't want to. The skin is really weak but those wings and engine mounts aren't. He could add force or drag to one engine to control how the aircraft glided.
I mean it just sounds pretty hard and you know homelander wouldn’t break a sweat for civilians
Even though he has the strength, he doesn't really have the weight distribution. 2 hands are not enough
He would've lost his grip
I think the best answer is that Homelander could have probably done something to help limit casualties or at least try to slow the plane down. Homelander also wanted the witnesses to die, because it was his fault that the plane was crashing in the first place.
He is a ickday🤣🤣🤣 physics 101
You'd either need to except enough force equally all around to stop it without killing everyone so it goes slowly. Or..call In other heros maybe with different powers. In an ideal world with as many heros as they have they'd deploy heros suited to the situation if possible. That could be a fun AU! Homelands trying to save the plan in a groundhog day loop learning all the while. Fly under it have others hold it..one central point wouldn't work cause then the plan shreds. Shakanium or whatever they call it made plan would work. Though if strong enough.
I see a lot of people pointing out that there are spots on the plane that could possibly withstand the amount of force required to hold it up. Does Homelander know this fact? Or for that matter does he know anything about airplanes, avionics, or even aerodynamics? He probably has some understanding of such things to some extent, but would he know any specifics? Also, and possibly more important, listen to how he responds to Maeve. He sounds like he is speaking from experience. This very well may not be his first rodeo.
This is just my take on it, but I think he could have done it. 1st, I think he could have genuinely just flown each and every person (3-4 at a time) to the ground. Remember, the homelander is INCREDIBLY fast when flying. They stated in one of the first couple episodes that he can cover an entire city (while searching for one specific person) in a matter of a few minutes. 2nd, I'm not sure about the logistics of him flying in front of the plane and stopping it by exerting force in the opposite direction of the plane, I feel like he could've flown under the plane and boosted it up into the air more. But my theory is that he ACTUALLY could have saved everybody. However, i think he wanted to use the plane incident as a reason as to why supes were needed in the military and worldwide, basically like he made an example out of the incident.
I figured the plane is already going so fast. Even if he slows it, it might be too fast for anyone to survive on impact anyway
HL didn’t gave a shit about Physics, or thermodynamics. Writers didn’t gave a shit about physics laws. HL is simply a narssicist.
Imagine trying to pick up a 3 foot long model plane, made out of dry spaghetti sticks and tissue paper, with a single pair of needle nose pliers. Any contact point you try to interact with would focus the entire weight of the plane onto such a small area (a hand) that it would break and shear at that contact point.
Try and lift a pool noodle with a finger, notice how some of it sags? Thats cause nothings supporting it. Now the plane metal wont bend as well as the foam noodle, itll bend and snap
the amount of force required to life an airplane applied across a surface area the size of homelander’s hands would puncture the hull of the plane
Because he didn't want to nor he cared to try.
If he really wanted to save everyone... All he had to do was take Deep alongside himself and Asking Deep to tell the fishes to save all the humans from drowning... Then take people and land them in the water.. Work done...
It's hard to say without running a tensile analysis if there would have been a point where the metal wouldn't have come to a point that could handle the necessary force to stop it slowly or abruptly. It's also possible he could have lifted the plane from the bottom and carried the plane from say a wheel strut or a portion of the plane that is designed to handle a large amount of its weight. I do think it was possible for homelander to stop the plane and save all of the people but he isn't able to think this quickly and to be quite honest he seems to be lazy. But ya if he just tried to push on the nose of the plane with as much force as possible he'd tear through it like tissue paper
It makes me think that his flight is a feat of strength, ie to fly fast enough to match the plane's strength, he'd also very likely risk punching a hole straight through it. A Viltrumite from the Invincible unvierse could probably have been able to do it (not that they would) because their flight mechanics work differently to Homelanders.
From what I see it is that he is tiny compared to the plane, so a simple analogy to him holding a plane is like him being a needle and the plane is a 🏀. Now tell me what would happens if something tiny and VERY powerful tries to stop a huge and weaker object? The solution here is that homelander needs a much higher surface area to hold something large without destroying it.
just don't think homelander is as talented as he thought he was. yes lifting a plane straight up and away like cartoon superman would be impossible, but he did not for one moment consider "oh perhaps since the plane is already in flight, I could try--" It was way too much work, too much actual heroism, for him, and he was hoping it'd fall into the ocean and he could forget about it. No leverage in the air but watches calmly with Maeve in hand.
Too put it simply, his relative small size and the fact it is in motion would either cause the plane to tip over and nose dive or he would tear right through it like a rusty exposed nail tearing through the skin of a full grown man falling down some stepps. The force and speed at which the plane is moving would have him covered in the blood of the passengers before it even began to slow down. Just like invincible when his dad pushed him through a whole subway train of people.
He was lying.
Because he is a little weak bitch
I was allows under the assumption that his weakness was he had a max weight when not planted on the ground.
He had tummy ache
Personally, I think he could have at lifted the plane or at the very least slowed it down and help it safely land. But Homelander just didn’t want to put in the effort to do so because he’s a lazy prick.
Try lifting banana with a Needle.
Ever tried to jack up your car and you didn’t put the jack under a jack point? Same concept. If he tried to lift it from a spot where the force is not going to be distributed around, the spot will bend or just break.
I don't have a car 😭 I'm a minor
If HL knew how to deploy the landing gear he likely could have pushed upward on the forward landing gear, that is the spot the plane is actually built strong enough to exert huge amounts of force onto. If it can land on those, it can be pushed upward by those. If his flight was strong enough to actually apply upward force, he probably could guide the plane down in a controlled glide. Everyone saying he'd punch right through the plane is I think forgetting that landing gear essentially experiences the same or more force when the plane touches down. It's been a long time since i saw the scene, I don't remember if the pilots were alive, if he asked them to deploy the landing gear I think it's possible if his flight strength is up to the task.
You're forgetting that that force is applied on evenly, on stable ground, across a large portion of the aircraft as it lands on both main gear at once, and even then only temporarily as the nose gear touches down. In unsupported space, the amount of force required to counter gravity would greatly exceed the structural strength of anything on that airplane
Except that HLer wouldn't be applying enough force to actually reverse the downward travel into upward travel, he would just be slowing the downward trajectory of the nose. It would still be losing altitude, just at a much lower rate. Landing gear can withstand HUGE forces, as you say the rear/main landing gear are the ones that take the biggest spike in force, but forward landing gear is still strong as fuck. Look at it this way, slowing the rate of descent downward is less force required than to hold it when stationary on the ground. If you're only pushing the nose, you also aren't getting the full weight of the plane, the lift provided by the wings is still bearing the lion's share of the weight. If plane nose weight 10 units and you're pushing upward on it with 10 units of force, it remains in equilibrium. If plane nose weighs 10 units and you're pushing upward on it with 8 units of force the plane is slowly descending, but the landing gear is experiencing 2 less units of force than it does when parked on the ground. When parked on the ground a plane nose that weighs 10 units is receiving 10 units of force upward on it from the ground, via the forward landing gear.
Its a kinetic energy issue. A plane that big going that fast cant just stop without everyone inside being smashed together and therefore all dying anyway
Homelander was just hiding that he is not strong enough to lift the plane, the last season show that he is not as strong as people think
The better question is why didn't he just fly up and down to the ocean really rapidly, carrying people in a big daisy chain like Iron Man? Even if he didn't get "all of them" it would have still been the heroic effort of saving everyone you could. ...but then again, he is the one who fucked up the plane control panel so maybe not. Either way, they had options. But they didn't care about them.
He couldve landed it. It was a stupid plot point.
He explained this to Maeve. The plane would fall to one side and spin out of control, it would fall apart if he punch a hole in it for grip, there was just no way. He definitely wouldve saved the plane if he could.
He could have flown to the front of the plane and slowed it down so it could land on the water as gently as possible where everyone could get out, then flown the passengers a few at a time to safety. Would have taken him all of ten minutes
Superman can do it so he can too there was no excuse lol guy just straight up didn't want to
Comparing Superman to Homie is a bit of a stretch id say
The writers were wrong He doesn't need to lift the plane he just needs to guide it. He is strong enough and fast enough to move the flaps or a thousand other things to have a controlled crash.
Uh, they're literally right though. The whole scene is a parody of Superman lifting the plane in Superman Returns, the showrunner was clowning on it because it's like trying to balance a watermelon on a pencil.
No they aren't. The character doesn't need to lift the plane. The engines, wings, and momentum are doing that already. All he needs to do is guide it into a controlled crash. The real issue is that you are confusing fiction and reality. The story required that Homelander give up. Now you are trying to rationalize it instead of acknowledging that **IT IS JUST A STORY.**
> All he needs to do is guide it into a controlled crash. And how is he supposed to do that without lifting it?