For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

7 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Usually the pilots never call each other "Brother" in the radio communication

Odd for me to think that PMCs might have modern combat jets - but apparently that is a thing these days. 

Different uniform and radio behavior - along with possibly flying below the 'training floor' most services establish - maybe indicates PMC vs regular, professional military? 

[sevenperforce]

Doesn't merit inclusion elsewhere but I had to roll my eyes.

For a smart person, Neil is really dumb sometimes.

He thinks that because he's got degrees and this mini cult of personality that he can just shoot from the hip without actually thinking about physics. Or, I don't know, looking up what dynamic pressure is.

[StrandedonEarth]

Well, given that the aircraft is nice and toasty, Maverick would burn up IF he ejected at that point. The movie never showed what happened after the craft broke up; it’s more plausible that he rode the cockpit down to a more survivable regime before ejecting. Staying conscious while likely tumbling at a high rate is another matter; but I suppose an ejection seat in a craft like that could be programmed accordingly. 

[DDE]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

in a craft like that

All bets are off, of course, but a craft like that is likely to have special accomodations.

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Well, given that the aircraft is nice and toasty, Maverick would burn up IF he ejected at that point. The movie never showed what happened after the craft broke up; it’s more plausible that he rode the cockpit down to a more survivable regime before ejecting. Staying conscious while likely tumbling at a high rate is another matter; but I suppose an ejection seat in a craft like that could be programmed accordingly. 

Some designs for rocket planes had the cockpit being able to jettison from plane if you had to eject at high velocity and attitude, you ride this to you get slower and lower before using the ejection seat. 

Scoot Mainly said the issue would just been heat, Just having the ejection seat turn with back towards airflow would probably bee enough if well deigned. 

[SunlitZelkova]

5 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Doesn't merit inclusion elsewhere but I had to roll my eyes.

For a smart person, Neil is really dumb sometimes.

He thinks that because he's got degrees and this mini cult of personality that he can just shoot from the hip without actually thinking about physics. Or, I don't know, looking up what dynamic pressure is.

http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2016/01/fact-checking-neil-degrasse-tyson.html?m=1

I imagine you have seen it before, but here is a link you might find interesting!

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Some designs for rocket planes had the cockpit being able to jettison from plane if you had to eject at high velocity and attitude, you ride this to you get slower and lower before using the ejection seat. 

Scoot Mainly said the issue would just been heat, Just having the ejection seat turn with back towards airflow would probably bee enough if well deigned. 

If I was designing an ejection system for a Mach 10+ crewed vehicle, I would certainly do an ejectable cockpit. Make the cockpit basically a miniature space capsule that blasts itself free and then tumbles to aerodynamically stabilize. A chute system for such a large capsule would probably be prohibitively heavy and require secondary cushioning like airbags, which make things much more tricky. So I would give the chute system a drogue that automatically deploys at low altitude and then a lower-energy ejection seat inside it so that the pilot can land with a personal parachute.

But that's not exactly what is reflected in the film. Maverick's suit is all sooty; he clearly had quite a toasty time. It's possible that the flight suit would be designed to ablate some to absorb heat at that point. Another possibility is that the ejection system actually flips the pilot's seat backward and out of the cockpit in order to position the back of the seat windward and keep the (now-inverted) pilot leeward.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

If I was designing an ejection system for a Mach 10+ crewed vehicle, I would certainly do an ejectable cockpit. Make the cockpit basically a miniature space capsule that blasts itself free and then tumbles to aerodynamically stabilize. A chute system for such a large capsule would probably be prohibitively heavy and require secondary cushioning like airbags, which make things much more tricky. So I would give the chute system a drogue that automatically deploys at low altitude and then a lower-energy ejection seat inside it so that the pilot can land with a personal parachute.

But that's not exactly what is reflected in the film. Maverick's suit is all sooty; he clearly had quite a toasty time. It's possible that the flight suit would be designed to ablate some to absorb heat at that point. Another possibility is that the ejection system actually flips the pilot's seat backward and out of the cockpit in order to position the back of the seat windward and keep the (now-inverted) pilot leeward.

I tried to say that the ejection seat could flip so its rear took the heat. 
But yes ejecting the pressurized cabin would be safer. You would then eject from it using an standard ejection seat. At low speed or attitude you would just use the seat. 

[kerbiloid]

17 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Some designs for rocket planes had the cockpit being able to jettison from plane if you had to eject at high velocity and attitude, you ride this to you get slower and lower before using the ejection seat. 

Scoot Mainly said the issue would just been heat, Just having the ejection seat turn with back towards airflow would probably bee enough if well deigned. 

B-58, XB-70, F-111

The issues also were with uncontrollable orientation on landing resulting in broken bones, and at least in one case (F-111)  with drowning  in water.

***

ttps://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/К-36ДМ?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Up to 3 M without the mini cabin.

[TheSaint]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

B-58, XB-70, F-111

The issues also were with uncontrollable orientation on landing resulting in broken bones, and at least in one case (F-111)  with drowning  in water.

***

ttps://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/К-36ДМ?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Up to 3 M without the mini cabin.

The B-1A was also equipped with an escape capsule rather than ejection seats, and the only time it was ever deployed it also resulted in a fatality. 

As for the hypersonic ejection scene in TG:M, remember this: No matter what the technical advisors tell the screenwriter, director, and/or producer is the most realistic portrayal, what they are going to put on the screen is what they think the audience will find to be the most believable, relatable, and (most importantly) entertaining portrayal. Facts be damned. Nobody in Hollywood has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of their audience, unfortunately.

[Ben J. Kerman]

I think this is the right thread for this question. Not spaceflight related, but sort-of science related.

Theoretically, if an object with absolutely no water or moisture in it at all was placed into a microwave oven (and turned on, duh) it wouldn't heat up, right? I'm just making sure I understand how a microwave works.

[ARS]

1 hour ago, Ben J. Kerman said:

Theoretically, if an object with absolutely no water or moisture in it at all was placed into a microwave oven (and turned on, duh) it wouldn't heat up, right? I'm just making sure I understand how a microwave works.

Microwave requires water inside the food to efficiently heat it, but despite this, some things that have very little water inside do heat up in microwave. Fats  for example, still heat up, albeit rather inefficiently. The classic example for this is the discovery of microwave oven itself where a chocolate bar melts due to a very badly shielded microwave emitter. Functionally, any polar molecule will work with microwave, but water absorbs microwaves better than others. If your food absolutely don't have any water inside, the result will vary - but generally, either no, or so little it’ll hardly make a difference. Microwaves bounce off metal, and vibrate polar molecules. Water is tiny, very polar, and very much present in almost all food, so it’s the most ubiquitous. While there are other polar molecules in various food items, there’s just not enough to absorb enough heat to matter

[kerbiloid]

The foil doesn't have water, and it burns.

[caecilliusinhorto]

Isn't that different? The foil sparks because of charges building up in the metal. (correct me if i'm wrong)

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, caecilliusinhorto said:

Isn't that different? The foil sparks because of charges building up in the metal. (correct me if i'm wrong)

Water isn't required. The foil is an example.

Edited October 29, 2022 by kerbiloid

[caecilliusinhorto]

But the foil doesn't heat up directly, it just sparks.

Water isn't required but the foil example is probably not the best (again, correct me if i'm wrong)

[kerbiloid]

12 minutes ago, caecilliusinhorto said:

But the foil doesn't heat up directly, it just sparks.

It directly receives the microwave energy. If it sparks or no, doesn't play a role, it's heated.

[ARS]

Does lower stall speed:
-Affected by the size of lifting surface area (if it's indeed like that, does flying wing design inherently have much lower stall speed than conventional design by essentially having the entire underside of the craft as lifting surface?)
-Beneficial for carrier landing when there's limited runway length?
-Beneficial for maneuvering during active combat?
-Have negative effect on aircraft?

Edited October 31, 2022 by ARS

[SunlitZelkova]

4 hours ago, ARS said:

-Affected by the size of lifting surface area (if it's indeed like that, does flying wing design inherently have much lower stall speed than conventional design by essentially having the entire underside of the craft as lifting surface?)
-Beneficial for carrier landing when there's limited runway length?
-Beneficial for maneuvering during active combat?

Yes I think*, yes, and yes, except I don’t know about flying wings**.

Apart from having a low stall speed, having a lower speed overall can be beneficial in the right hands.

Po-2s flown as bombers during WWII were difficult to shoot down because the max speed of it was near the stall speed of the German fighters. When North Korea used them in the Korean War, US Navy pilots flying their F7F Tigercats had similar issues.

*I think this is what wing loading is, not sure for sure.

**Flying wings may be their own beast. The YB-49  had poor performance, and presumably the YB-35 had similar issues. B-2 shouldn’t count as it is fly-by-wire.

4 hours ago, ARS said:

-Have negative effect on aircraft?

Yes, because you get the above mentioned benefits at a cost. The A6M Zero had a very low stall speed for an aircraft of its class (with very low wing loading!), but was difficult to control at high speeds and could not out run or catch up to American fighters using boom and zoom tactics (at least once the F6F and F4U arrived).

There are ton of factors that go into an aircraft being effective though. The Zero wasn’t as controllable at high speeds as the F4F, but USN pilots also practiced world class tactics like deflection shooting and had better coordination overall, along with the benefit of radar direction.

I bet if the Americans had had Zeros and the Japanese the F4F, the outcome would have been the same in air battles over the Pacific (assuming the Americans still had radar).

[sevenperforce]

34 minutes ago, dogecoin investor said:

what is the meaning of life

The answer is trivial.

The question is the challenge.

[razark]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

The question is the challenge.

What do you get if you multiply six by nine?

[sevenperforce]

9 minutes ago, razark said:

What do you get if you multiply six by nine?

Off, usually.

Oh, wait, you said MULTIPLY six by nine, not PUT six by nine. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

38 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Off, usually.

Oh, wait, you said MULTIPLY six by nine, not PUT six by nine. 

Sorry, I thought he said Seven of Nine and my mind wandered.

[Gargamel]

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Any audiologists or sound engineers here?

Would adding a Bose-like 'noise canceling speaker' to a computer case (something that would detect the noise of the computer and all its fans and put out the reverse frequenc(y/ies) work to reduce the impact of the constant white noise fan whine?