Thrust: How much power that is being used to go forward. Lift on the other hand: is how much power that is used to gain altitude, like in a rocket ship or a plane.
The power to propel a ship is dependent on a number of things besides resistance. You must consider the size of the ship, its weight, and its passenger's weight before you can determine the power required to move it.
The approximate minimum power required to put a manned rocket into space is around 2 million horsepower. This power is needed to overcome Earth's gravity, propel the rocket to the necessary speed to enter orbit, and provide thrust for the journey.
Spaceships don't have horsepower in the traditional sense like cars do. Their propulsion systems are typically measured in terms of thrust, which is the force exerted by the engines to propel the spacecraft through space. The amount of thrust can vary greatly depending on the type of propulsion system being used.
Thrust Capacity is how much thrust it can take :D
The airplane is flown by the shape it is in and how much weight, drag and thrust there is. The wind travels over and under the plane to main tain flight.
It's all in the physics. A plane has plenty of surface area thanks to its wings, and this creates lift, an upward force that pushes the plane into the air, when pushing against air with the wings at the right angle. Thrust from the jets helps the plane stay in motion in the air. If these two forces are greater than drag (against thrust) or weight (against lift), the plane will remain airborne.
When going at the speeds planes have to go to maintain altitude, brakes on the wheels can't properly slow down the plane, and even when they can, they have to take quite a bit of physical abuse. Thrust reversers, on the other hand, don't harm much of the plane, and work even as the plane bounces slightly from touch-down.
Weight affects the amount of lift required to raise the weight. Thrust determines how much power is required to move the weight and at what speed.
If the thrust is directed straight down and torque is counteracted, the weight it can lift is less than 45 pounds. It requires at least 45 pounds of thrust just to make 45pounds of vtol aircraft hover . It takes more than that to make it climb vertically up. To climb implies an acceleration against gravity and it takes at least 45 pounds thrust just to balance gravity's pull against a 45pound mass. With a winged aircraft the thrust can be less than the total weight of the aircraft and it can still fly and climb with less thrust than the mass of the plane. A high lift to drag ratio of the wing and effective wing area means that the thrust of the plane overcomes the drag of the plane. The wing's passage through the air creates the lift. The drag caused by the creation of 45pounds of lift is less than 45 pounds for an efficient wing.
The amount of thrust depends on the power of the engine
The space shuttle required approximately 7.8 million pounds of thrust to lift off from the launch pad. This was generated by its main engines and two solid rocket boosters.