We have vehicles for all types of nature's elements except for fire

matto@lemm.ee to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 98 points –

We have cars for earth, boats for water and planes for air. Nothing for fire. Not that I want to ride on fire.

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We do.

The vehicles used by bushfire (wildfires in Nth America) fighters are designed to drive through and survive fire.

Dang!

Dang indeed. That is crazy. Kudos to those firefighters!

Any pics of the outside of these trucks?

ETA: I found some. I guess theyre called brush trucks. Pretty much a BIG truck with firefighting accessories. How do the tires not melt? https://unruhfire.com/brush-trucks/

Aren't rockets vehicles that ride on fire (that they create themselves)?

By that logic, anything that has an engine rides on fire

Ok but the return capsule kinda rides on fire when it re-enters the atmosphere

The fire is at the vehicle’s boundary for a rocket, making the rocket a vehicle that rides on fire.

So solid, liquid, gas, and missing plasma. You just need to have a really big bang and any of the other vehicles will do

I have a vehicle that is powered by fire, does that count?

Technically you can have all the other vehicles for the remaining elements running on fire.

Hot air balloon is probably your best bet for doing this

I'd say this one. It catches the product of fire and rides on it

Earth, water, air all have density. Meaning we can create a vehicle that can be lower destiny than the (Earth, water, air) our vehicle is riding in.

Fire doesn't have density. So we can't make a vehicle lighter than fire as fire has no density to begin with.

A rocket you say? Doesn't qualify. The rocket (when in the atmosphere) is providing lots of expanding gasses which creates a difference in air pressure pushing the vehicle forward. The rocket (when in the vacuum of space) is providing lots of expanding gasses at high velocities that we throw out of one side of the rocket causing the rocket to be thrown equally and oppositely the other direction. We have lots of engine in space which done have fire at all (nitrogen cold gas thrusters come to mind).

While fire itself may not have mass or density, the materials involved in the fire (fuel and oxygen) do have density.

In the context of a rocket engine, the combustion process involves the ejection of high-speed exhaust gases, which have mass and therefore contribute to the overall density of the vehicle.

We're in agreement on the physics of rocket propulsion. However, "fire" is essentially defined as a chemical oxidation reaction. The reaction itself doesn't have mass. While fuel and oxidizer undergo the oxidation reaction, it isn't the reaction itself providing the propulsion, its the mass and velocity of the combustion products.

This is why the "natural element" definition is old and out-of-date. Any discussion of "fire" as an element is a philosophical or literary exercise, not a scientific one.

I think you nailed it - fire is not analogous to earth, wind, and water (and heart), so the premise of the post is confounded.

I tried to imagine a vehicle for travelling on a surface of Heart, then decided I don't want to.

Sounds like we need to gene splice minecraft striders into a reality.