Comment by NovemberWhiskey

Surely it's a less impressive result that something powered by mains electricity can move the air in a draft than that a multi-hundred-ton aircraft can fly over the highest mountains.

It's the size of the aerodynamic forces and the complexity of the physical mechanisms that create them that many people have trouble with. In particular: intuitions can be pretty wrong, most simplified explanations are wrong under simple experiments, and the problems exhibit scale variance that is unfamiliar (e.g. Reynolds number).

One time I was working on air data computer for a transonic aircraft that could fly up to about M0.95 - during flight test, an air data probe mounted on a nose boom was used to supply impact and static pressures, angle of attack and sideslip etc. for various air data calculations like airspeed and altitude.

I was fascinated that there was a term in the calculation that related to the aircraft flap position - what's happening way out on the trailing edge of the wing actually has a meaningful effect of pressures measured on a boom out the front of the nose during certain regimes of flight.