Was it like a car going 150 mph then suddenly drops to 0 then instantly kicks up to 250 mph? Could the same force be replicated on a human body but at much slower speeds? Wouldn't hitting that barrier jar the body a lot??

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[–] 22 points 4 months ago (8 children)

The "sound barrier" is not a physical barrier, like a wall. You wouldn't come to a complete stop. It's just the point at which you're moving so fast that the air no longer has time to move out of the way, and so it behaves differently.

It would be really rough on your body, to be sure, but not as bad as hitting a magic wall that makes you come to a complete stop.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I watched the excerpts of his video but never really explained why the turning happened for a while then stopped?

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    How would you control your spin if there's no air to push against? The ionosphere is so thin, it may as well be hard vacuum. until you made it to some place the air is thick enough to help control your rotation, once you start spinning, you can't stop.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    But why in the first place did he start spinning? The people they talked to were awaiting it and were suprised it didn't come thru sooner.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    Yeah, we're not a regular, balanced geometric shape. Without a tether or something to help stabilize against, every marginal push or pull (like gravity, or the marginal friction of the ionosphere) will tend to send us tumbling.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

    Perhaps not a complete stop but numerous aircraft were destroyed as they tried to break the speed of sound. The air building up in front of you is excess pressure that is loud enough to shake windows on the ground. We shouldn’t discount the force supplied by air. It is a pressure wave from bombs, not fire, that causes explosive damage.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Oh, yeah, the forces are very intense. But it isn't at all the same as coming to a complete stop - closer to the water hammer effect if anything (since the air becomes incompressable at those speeds). There's also a lot of turbulence, vibration, and heat from the drastically increased air resistance.

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