Weight

A 800 g drone

A drone with four propellers sits on the ground. It weighs about 800 g, a little less than a big carton of milk. The red arrow is Earth pulling the drone down. That pull is its weight. To fly, the drone has to push up at least this hard.

Why?Earth pulls on everything. On the ground, the floor pushes back just as hard, so nothing moves. In the air there is no floor, so the drone has to make its own upward push.

Go furtherThis drone is not a real product. It is a typical small drone (about 800 g, with propellers about 13 cm across). Every motion on screen was calculated from these numbers, 1,000 times a second.