4 ms·
Typically something in the far-upper atmosphere breaks the sound barrier by just falling - not as many molecules to produce drag - but I don't think the sound b
by Marticus 16y ago
Typically something in the far-upper atmosphere breaks the sound barrier by just falling - not as many molecules to produce drag - but I don't think the sound barrier "breaks" at that altitude for the same reason terminal velocity is greater than the speed of sound up there.
I may be mistaken in this, but I don't think without propulsion or an absurdly stable / aerodynamic falling that you can actually "break" the sound barrier in the traditional sense at the point in the air where density is high enough to produce the shockwave effect.
Edit: That second paragraph was entirely too convoluted on my first go at it.
- mchouza 16y agoIt's not very difficult: the Tallboy Bomb was free-falling and exceeded Mach 3 at impact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallboy_bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallboy_bomb
- Marticus 16y agoI guess what I'm now wondering is whether or not something requires a certain drag coefficient to, upon achieving trans-sonic speeds, create a shock wave in the air. Obviously they probably didn't produce a shock wave at absurdly high altitudes, but were also probably falling at trans-sonic speeds. What I was trying to mull over was for how long and at which point could something like that achieve enough drag to presumably both travel at trans-sonic speeds AND produce an audible shock wave as per an aircraft achieving the same speeds. But that is also why I put in the disclaimer about high aerodynamic capability, because obviously the terminal velocity would be enough to surpass that pretty easily. I didn't know it would be Mach-3-easy, though. Edit: That is pretty awesome though - traveling that fast would mean you wouldn't hear it coming...