🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <871@m3.mfci.UUCP> colwell@mfci.UUCP (Robert Colwell) writes:
>In article <3305@kalliope.rice.edu> phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
>>In article <862@m3.mfci.UUCP> colwell@mfci.UUCP (Robert Colwell) writes:
>>>...
>>>Solving that for N in seconds, I get 0.27 seconds.  My impression was that
>>>the booms were obviously separated in time.  I'd expect that people might
>>>have a hard time distinguishing booms that were only 0.27 seconds apart.
>>
>>I'd expect that you're wrong.  That's a quarter of a second, which is most
>>certainly distinguishable (or for you computer types:  250 milliseconds).
>
>If the craft were really travelling at 300mph, there wouldn't *be* any sonic
>booms.

Whoops.  I guess I missed something.

>is the shuttle one of the longest supersonic aircraft?

In fact, I believe that it is.  Not *the* longest, but probably one of the
top five.

Another possibility is that the shockwaves coming off the front and the
tail are shaped differently.  Isn't the shape determined by the shape of
the object itself?  Wouldn't the shape then determine the angle off the
direction of the craft's forward travel?  And wouldn't that in turn effect
the amount of time the wave took to intersect with the earth?  I don't
know much about aerodynamics, so I'm just guessing.

Also remember that the craft is rapidly decelerating.  Isn't the shape of
the wave also determined by the speed?  Would that have anything to do
with it?

			William LeFebvre
			Department of Computer Science
			Rice University
			<phil@Rice.edu>