What's the biggest influences on an aircraft's speed/performance?

[TheSoccerMom]

I've got French-Canadian heritage and can't speak without my hands.  
The blanker the look I get, the bigger the gestures get.  It's the French-Canadian way of shouting.

I KNEW you were okay.

                                  

[Chopper Doc]

Thanks, Mom, you say the nicest things.

Actually, there's lots about our aircraft that makes for fascinating cocktail knowledge.  For instance, when you consider that a turbine engine is open at both ends (compressor inlet and exhaust) it's hard to imagine that the combustion chamber housing (in the middle between those openings as well as being between the compressor and turbines) might be containing over 100 psi at 100%N1.

Amazing things, our little forced air furnaces.  A pressure drop of 100 psi from one side of the turbine wheels to the other results from the extraction of compressor power and shaft power.  And the guts spin at up to 50,000 rpm.  For hundreds of cycles over thousands of hours.

Wow.  And the basic designs haven't changed since the '50s.

[G-man]

Wow.  And the basic designs haven't changed since the '50s.

Sometimes simple designs are worth keeping:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfTrBQFx1E0