ORIGINAL: Rocketmagnet
As someone who's got almost no experience with wings at all, I'm probably sticking my neck out here. But I'd like to say that I think it's terribly misleading to say that lift and drag are the same thing. If they were the same thing, you literally wouldn't need two different words. However, you do have two words, and furthermore, one of these things is considered 'good' in an airplane, and the other is considered 'bad'.
But to suggest that they actually are inseparably tied, and suggest that there really is just one force, isn't bad at all. If you're trying to get people to loosen their tie and unbutton their collar and think a little less technical, it makes perfect sense.
As an analogy, consider matter and energy. Now they literally *are* the same thing. E=mc^2 basically means E=m. In fact, when you hear particle physicists talking about the mass of particles, thay always state the mass in eV (electron volts, a measure of energy). Because mass and energy are the same thing, physicists have done away with one of the words because it's redundant.
However, imagine trying to have a discussion about flight using only one word "drift" as someone suggested. Someone might say "How can I design a wing to reduce the drift as much as possible?" and you might reply "Why? Do you want it to fall out of the sky? If you want to reduce the drift, just don't put any wings on at all!" This obviously leads to absurdity, and is no help at all.
And nobody has yet tried to convince the masses to quit using descriptive terms when talking about the details they were created to describe.
whatever.........