quote: In a short dash above the Pacific, it is to use its experimental scramjet engine, which is expected to push the craft to almost 7,000 miles an hour, or 10 times the speed of sound.
Achieving the milestone will be a major step toward one day having planes that can cross the country in less than half an hour...
Now I can visit all of you friendly folks in this forum and be back in time for dinner!
quote: After the firing, the aircraft is to conduct a series of high-speed maneuvers as it spirals to an ocean splashdown. No recovery effort is planned.
Hmm. Perhaps I'll keep the remains to decorate my room.
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posted
If yaw'll keep up with the puns, Bunn V is likely to get impatient and pitch this thread into the trash.
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It's good that BunnV learn this now. There's nothing that can't descend into puns around here.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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It takes a big person to refrain from making puns when the opportunity presents itself. Here at Hatrack there are few so laage.
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How did they measure this speed? What instruments do we have that measure that high? Was it measured on-board, or from the ground? (since there would be nothing that could keep up with it, I don't know how they can measure from the ground, though)
Obviously the limitation of speed and flight is that MAN cannot travel that fast -- our bodies can't take it. What is the fastest we can send a human body before it is too much?
quote:What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches? The Quarterly Review
Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia. Dionysius Lardner, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London, and author of The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated
So we can confidently predict that man will never travel much faster than a horse can run. Besides
quote:What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense. Napoleon Bonaparte on steamships
No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free. King William I of Prussia on trains
An unmanned NASA jet screamed into the record books high over the Pacific Ocean by reaching speeds of almost 7,000 mph, brightening hopes that humans might one day be able to fly across a continent in minutes instead of hours.
"We can really do this stuff," he said.
Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002
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We seem to be making great strides in propulsion these days. Ion engines, Scram jets. Why, it wouldn't suprise me to one day step outside my house and found I'd already left without me. There'd I'd be...um, not...there...
Hmm...
Cool stuff.
I'm so glad I came into this thread to decompress.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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In a vacuum, the only limit to the speed a human can take is the speed of light. Let's not take that one any further, shall we?
In atmosphere, the faster you go, the more atmospheric resistance you have to push through. The limits to speed in an atmosphere are primarily mechanical--how much thrust can you package in a streamlined object? The person sitting inside in their pressure-controlled cabin can handle any speed you want. Also, at the higher speeds, because of the higher forces acting on your craft, any deviation from your true path will result in turbulence, violent shocks, etc. But that's how life is, isn't it?
As far as acceleration, I think that the limit for human endurance is somewhere about 5 or 6 G's (1G = 32 ft/sec^2 = Acceleration due to gravity, as a reference). I would imagine that you could survive bursts of greater than that, and would be severely injured but not killed at 10G or above, but I'm just extrapolating wildly, here.
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