Oh, the stupid, it burns

[pecunium]

There's a show on, about stunts.

This guy is diving out of one plane, to catch up to, and then enter another, which is below him.

The bottom plane is nose down, with the motor off, and a drogue out.

The explanations...

1: It's in a vertical stall. It's not, it's in a nose-down dive.

2: It's travelling faster than he is, because it's heavier than he is. No, it needs the drogue because the powered plane was accellerating down, and; even if it weren't, he, and it, accellerate at the same speed, and so he can't catch up.

Sigh.

Comments

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Yes, those are derwents, in a Meteor, because you said jet engine. What spitfire had a jet engine?

Checking the tables, i see I did make a mistake, I misrememberd 1 poundal as 1g which would be 150lbs thrust, but 1 poundal = .249g, so the actual downward thrust of a 1g field is = 600 lbs.

But weight has nothing to do with that thrust.

Put me outside the immediate pull of the earth and I can use a ridiculously small thrust (something like 15 lbs) as a constant acceleration and be at Mars in 3 months, and Pluto in 6.

When a plane is nose down, and not fighting gravity, the thurst of the motor (be it prop, or jet, or rocket) is gravy, because the free-fall of the object (which is only affected by density/surface area) means everything else is already applying 1G of downward acceleration.

The place where the 1,000 lbs of thrust are inadequate is when it's fighting gravity, not when it's added to it.

TK