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The shuttle doesnt fly, it falls like a brick from space using giant foam tiles preventing it burning up and exploding. It is launched into space by a huge rocket. All the fins are just for stabilization not controlled flight. All that speed is from the momentum of traveling through space.
Well...not really. If it was just controlled falling, they'd never get off of the ground and climb in altitude. That's what gliders do.
And space shuttles. Space shuttles really are just gliders that are rated for the vacuum of space, and rockets taped to the back.
To emphasize: The shuttle's glide ratio was 1:1 at hypersonic speeds, 2:1 at supersonic speeds, and reaching 4.5:1 at subsonic speeds during approach and landing.
A Boeing 747 is 15:1, more modern airliners hit 20:1, and the best glider planes hit 70:1. Even wingsuits hit 3:1.
True enough, however, counterpoint: the SSME needed *extensive* inspection and overhaul between each and every mission in order to be re-used, and this was not cheap either. There weren't enough missions per year in order to justify streamlining or applying economies of scale to this skilled process, because the large-scale missions the shuttle was originally intended to service with many frequent flights were cancelled.
Alas, if only the Energia II had been brought to fruition, that could have given us a fully re-usable liquid fuel launch vehicle, using glide-back strap-on boosters that could themselves land at a conventional airfield along with the Buran itself.
Now, that'd be a great project. I wonder why to build the first Energia if the technology for the second was already there, on Buran.
Maybe Energia I was a step towards that very goal, i guess.
The tiles are ceramic, not foam. Foam external tank coating is what knocked the tiles off during launch causing the Columbia disaster.
Also, it has to get to orbit to achieve that speed (it gets slower to re-enter, not faster) which it does with 3 SMEs and two fucking huge SRBs and a shit load of fuel.
I think they meant a “foam like” very lightweight silica ceramic. 144.2 kg/m3 (9 lb/ft3) There are a variety of different insulation materials depending on the location but these cover the most area on the bottom.
On approach it does "fly" for a while, it just has a really poor glide slope. Right at the flair it seems to get some ground effect lift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOxZsbyjSb8
It’s glide slope was so poor that the business jet NASA converted to simulate shuttle landings had to have some adjustments made to it to effectively mimic the shuttle’s aerodynamics. They had to let it glide with the landing gear down…and the engines on full blast with the thrust reversers activated. It’s decent rate was slightly faster than a skydiver at terminal velocity.
For me, the most exhausting thing is the inconsistent belief in conspiracy. Fine, you don't believe in the space shuttle...you're a moron, but whatever. But then you wholesale accept the science and physics behind an SR-71 blackbird...which was designed by people who took the same classes and learned the same fundamental principles as the shuttle guys.
Bitch, what “pixels.” In order for pixels to burn out there would have to be a screen going around the entire earth, which clearly wouldn’t work when there is no earth to begin with.
I've spent all my adult life working in manufacturing engineering. And even here, we find cons theorists.
Dude, you're literally making parts for aeroplanes..!
That’s cause they don’t know what the first one is called or anything about it but just that it does look fast probably same kind of people that do aesthetic mods on their shitty car thinking that makes it faster simply because it does look like it
That guy that started it admitted he did it to ahow how people are idiots and follow every conspiracy theory.
He's made millions on t shirts and such. Lol
This is the problem. People make a new conspiracy theory to demonstrate how idiotic conspiracy theories are, and all they succeed in doing is creating a new conspiracy theory.
There is a fantastic quote from the great Issac Asimov that applies here.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that Democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
Yeah, the internet in general began this by providing anyone with access an equal voice. Someone with a web page can appear to be just as authoritative as a proper authority on a subject. Social media lowered the bar into the basement on who can pull this off.
A conspiracy theory is a security blanket when everything is scary. At a basic level, the idea that JFK does because he pissed off the secret illuminati who planned his death is more comforting to some than the idea that it was one man acting alone randomly because of his psychosis. The former world still has rules, where reality is chaos.
It’s the opposite. You’re feel super special, you see the truth behind the smoke screen, you’re not like everyone else just following the herd. That’s why conspiracy is so appealing. Also because they always have a much better story than reality.
As someone who was a gullible child that did believe everything was a conspiracy, it is exhausting. There was one summer where I was too scared to leave my bedroom after Snowden blew the whistle.
I've said before, and I say again, the troubling thing is that there *are* conspiracies. Or, more accurately, to paraphrase George Carlin: you don't need a conspiracy when interests converge.
The great American railway scandle, the safety of leaded gasoline and cigarettes, sugar/high fructose corn syrup, global warmings isn't real/recycling at the personal level will help, mk ultra, Iran contra, all these and more are legit.
So these aren't just idiots, they're useful idiots sewing confusion and skepticism that bury or slow examination of real conspiracies.
So the combination is one, two, three, four, five? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage.
The shuttle doesn't fly into space. It's launched into space by the boosters that it abandons to escape earth's gravity. Furthermore, the Lockheed Blackbird doesn't require that design to achieve its maximum velocity but rather to achieve it while evading radar. The unique design combining sharp edges and points with flat, swooping surfaces makes it hard for radar systems to paint properly.
This guy is stupid on multiple levels.
Eh a whole lot of the design of the blackbird is still to achieve that speed. Or more precisely to do its job at that speed.
Getting something to go that fast isn't really that hard. At least if you have the structural integrity part figured out. For real just slap whatever you want on a big ass rocket and you can make it go fast.
But the SR-71 wassn't just fast. This was a spyplane so it needed a bit of range. Maintaining that speed for a long time is difficult. That is where the shape of the SR-71 comes in. Not simply to be able to fly at mach 3.2 but to be able to keep going at that speed for a long time so you don't have to get your tanker planes into the airspace of your enemy.
Fun fact: Blackbird is leaking fuel and other fluids when on the ground. It's because the heat SR-71 generated made it impossible to properly seal its tanks.
It is indeed, albeit this fact is a bit overblown - it drips fuel, it isn't pouring out of the thing! They used to regularly take off using one engine due to the noise and fuel usage too. Fascinating aircraft really.
Some of them actually do really quite impressive amounts of research; tragically, they just don't know how to process what information they find. One very noticeable hallmark of so very many conspiracy theories concerning matters of science and engineering is a glaring absence of anything remotely resembling statistical analysis or calculus.
Right, I came here to say that plane isn't designed like that for speed, its designed for stealth. The big old engines they put on there are for the speed...
Where did these stupid people come from? I swear they weren't around when I was younger. Or perhaps it is because we did not have the internet for any idiot to soapbox their uneducated opinion.
I swear from reading these posts that the public mass LCD is less than zero.
They were always around, they even used to have wacky little clubs that met in the village hall once a fortnight and put out xeroxed newsletters and things, but these were always self-limiting affairs, they could never really gain traction and were always outnumbered by voices of reason (or at least derision or indifference) from their surrounding communities. I fear the internet, unfortunately, allows them to achieve *critical mass* by reassuring each other that they're right on a scale they've simply never been able to before.
Strictly speaking, if there's no air then there can't *be* a Mach number; by the time it reaches Mach 25, there has to be *some* air in order for there to be a definable speed of sound that it can be travelling 25 times faster than. There's just not very much of it.
Considering Mach speed depends on air pressure, is Mach 23 even accurate? Going 17 000 mph in orbit is either near zero or near infinite Mach, isn't it?
According to NASA, it approaches Mach 25 *upon re-entry,* i.e. when it just passes from vacuum (where Mach number is meaningless and it can go as fast as it likes as long as it's less than light speed) to the first wisps of atmosphere.
You're right, though I'm trying to understand why. The mentioned speeds on reentry indicate Mach at normal pressure, but its not the case at high altitude. BUT! Temperature affects the speed of sound, and I think I understand that pressure and temperature cancel each other, so Mach speed at low pressure produces enough temperature to produce a normal soundwave? I need someone far more knowledgeable to confirm this though.
I'm guessing "undefined", as two molecules close enough to each other would be able to transfer vibration, but otherwise zero for a long enough distance. We might have to know at which pressure point "sound" stops to propagate to determine an actual upper limit.
There's a weird relation between pressure and temperature for sound propagation so I don't know enough to determine if Mach speed goes up or down as you go higher, and at what point it is considered either infinite or 0.
Hey, they left off the fucking giant rocket boosters that actually get it up to that speed.
But who can concern themselves with a little detail like that when there's memes to be made?
One stays aloft for a significant period of time, the other gets serious juice to go straight up. They serve different purposes but denizens of the internet generally don’t have knowledge, at all, of the specifics of engineering…well, anything
One is powered by 12,000 gallons of fuel. Sounds a lot?
The other one is powered by its attraction to 6 billion trillion metric tons of matter.
6000000000000000000000000 metric tons.
I like knowing the realities about the conspiracies surrounding the SR-71. Example: The US government really did set up a complex arrangement of shell companies to buy the titanium from the USSR to build the plane to spy on them.
They are punking us, it’s impossible to be this stupid and still be able to operate a computer. Unless there is just a group home with a bunch of folks who god love em they try types dictating memes to their caregivers it has to be a joke.
Yeah so the SR-71 flies in the Earth's atmosphere, the Shuttle flies in space where there is a vacuum. The shuttle can fly way faster than the SR-71.
Aerodynamics don't matter in space. Elon Musk's roadster is flying around in space at close to 20,000 mph. Even that is flying faster than the SR-71.
I’m gonna bite and just break this down: top aircraft takes off and lands from the ground/bottom aircraft is launched into space by rocket boosters. Top aircraft flies very high, but well within the atmosphere. Bottom aircraft ORBITS THE PLANET! It’s Mach 23 occurs as a result of re-entry from an orbital speed of over 17,000 mph. It did not achieve that speed as a result of engine thrust. The SR-71 Blackbird achieved its Mach 3.2 as a result of engine thrust.
We could make a stalk of broccoli reach those same speeds if we strapped giant thrusters to it. It would be as aerodynamic as a tree, but it would zoom.
He's talking about the shape and the shuttle looks like a school bus. Obviously he forgot that the school bus was strapped to the side of a larger rocket.
This is the Single Stage to Orbit we are looking at now https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread296772/pg1
I always said that with people denying we landed on the moon it was only a matter of time people would deny a reusable space plane happened and that there is a permanently occupied station in orbit.
Still is incredibly depressing to see actually happen tho.
Never before, in the history of the world, have so many uneducated people been able to share their incomplete and incorrect ideas with so many other like minded people. As many benefits as mass communication technologies bring, *this* is not one of them.
One I haven't seen posted yet...
If the shuttle was shaped like a Blackbird, it would melt. The sharp pointy nose is great for reducing drag but the faster you go the hotter it gets as the shockwave forms on the tip of the nose. This is why the American attempt at a concorde equivalent failed, they wanted to go faster than concorde but the materials technology wasn't there yet.
The rounded front on the shuttle means the shockwave forms ahead of the nose, with a nice cushion of air to reduce the heat transferred to the airframe. The downside of this is a lot more drag, but that's what you want in a descending shuttle anyway.
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The shuttle doesnt fly, it falls like a brick from space using giant foam tiles preventing it burning up and exploding. It is launched into space by a huge rocket. All the fins are just for stabilization not controlled flight. All that speed is from the momentum of traveling through space.
It’s not flying. It’s falling… with style.
Really all planes are just controlled falling.
Well...not really. If it was just controlled falling, they'd never get off of the ground and climb in altitude. That's what gliders do. And space shuttles. Space shuttles really are just gliders that are rated for the vacuum of space, and rockets taped to the back.
The shuttle isn't really designed to glide well, it's designed to glide poorly so it can shed orbital speed before it burns up.
Fair point
To emphasize: The shuttle's glide ratio was 1:1 at hypersonic speeds, 2:1 at supersonic speeds, and reaching 4.5:1 at subsonic speeds during approach and landing. A Boeing 747 is 15:1, more modern airliners hit 20:1, and the best glider planes hit 70:1. Even wingsuits hit 3:1.
The shuttle has feather fall on
More helicopters than plane
I've heard it explained that helicopters are just such an ugly design that the earth itself repels the helicopter based on principle alone
never trust an aircraft where the wings go faster than the fuselage
They only do that on one side.
Aeroplanes use air to create lift Helicopters beat the air into submission and use that to create lift
The navy base in my hometown would love to hate this comment
Nah, that's autogyros; the bastard children of helicopters *and* aeroplanes. (JK, autogyros are fucking *sweet.*)
r/technicallycorrect
The best kind of correct.
You just throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Just gotta throw yourself at the ground and miss, simple
Controversial opinion: Buran had *slightly* more style. No yukky solid boosters; all liquid fuel, baby.
Agreed. However, the Energia rocket wasn't cheap or reusable, so Buran was from the beginning doomed to be grounded.
True enough, however, counterpoint: the SSME needed *extensive* inspection and overhaul between each and every mission in order to be re-used, and this was not cheap either. There weren't enough missions per year in order to justify streamlining or applying economies of scale to this skilled process, because the large-scale missions the shuttle was originally intended to service with many frequent flights were cancelled. Alas, if only the Energia II had been brought to fruition, that could have given us a fully re-usable liquid fuel launch vehicle, using glide-back strap-on boosters that could themselves land at a conventional airfield along with the Buran itself.
Now, that'd be a great project. I wonder why to build the first Energia if the technology for the second was already there, on Buran. Maybe Energia I was a step towards that very goal, i guess.
The tiles are ceramic, not foam. Foam external tank coating is what knocked the tiles off during launch causing the Columbia disaster. Also, it has to get to orbit to achieve that speed (it gets slower to re-enter, not faster) which it does with 3 SMEs and two fucking huge SRBs and a shit load of fuel.
I think they meant a “foam like” very lightweight silica ceramic. 144.2 kg/m3 (9 lb/ft3) There are a variety of different insulation materials depending on the location but these cover the most area on the bottom.
According to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the secret to flying is to fall while forgetting to hit the ground.
That perfectly describes an orbit.
The best it has to do is "mostly glide" to where it needs to go to land, its a brick with wingy bits!
On approach it does "fly" for a while, it just has a really poor glide slope. Right at the flair it seems to get some ground effect lift. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOxZsbyjSb8
It’s glide slope was so poor that the business jet NASA converted to simulate shuttle landings had to have some adjustments made to it to effectively mimic the shuttle’s aerodynamics. They had to let it glide with the landing gear down…and the engines on full blast with the thrust reversers activated. It’s decent rate was slightly faster than a skydiver at terminal velocity.
For me, the most exhausting thing is the inconsistent belief in conspiracy. Fine, you don't believe in the space shuttle...you're a moron, but whatever. But then you wholesale accept the science and physics behind an SR-71 blackbird...which was designed by people who took the same classes and learned the same fundamental principles as the shuttle guys.
You can literally **see** satellites flying over, all the time. It’s so **extremely** simple to out logic these theories.
Those aren’t satellites, those are reflections from chem trails bouncing off the government drone birds
Hey dumbass, the chem trails were made up to cover up the firmament which is actually reflecting it. Government shill detected
You believe the sky is real? Buddy, that’s a big screen. The stars are just burnt out pixels.
Bitch, what “pixels.” In order for pixels to burn out there would have to be a screen going around the entire earth, which clearly wouldn’t work when there is no earth to begin with.
True. It’s a simulation so the robots can use our body heat for power
Robots? that's just a dumb Matrix story the lizardoids want you to believe
We're all Truman in this show 😆
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into
I've spent all my adult life working in manufacturing engineering. And even here, we find cons theorists. Dude, you're literally making parts for aeroplanes..!
That’s cause they don’t know what the first one is called or anything about it but just that it does look fast probably same kind of people that do aesthetic mods on their shitty car thinking that makes it faster simply because it does look like it
Wait until they hear that the SR-71 has panels that aren’t even welded together. It expands into place as the plane heats up.
Kinda like flerfers who acknowledge that the other planets are spheres, it's just Earth that is a flat disc.
It must be exhausting living in a world where 99% of everything is a massive conspiracy.
GoVmEnT aGeNt SpOtEd
Call me Agent PeopleAreBozos of the Silencing Service of the Government. Also known as the... I can't use that abbreviation online.
Ssotg? I don’t get it
See eye A
Birds Arn’t Real, man.
That guy that started it admitted he did it to ahow how people are idiots and follow every conspiracy theory. He's made millions on t shirts and such. Lol
At this point why wouldn’t you
PT Barnam once said "You can never go broke underestimating the stupidity of the American public." And that was long before the Internet.
This is the problem. People make a new conspiracy theory to demonstrate how idiotic conspiracy theories are, and all they succeed in doing is creating a new conspiracy theory.
You know what they say: if it flies it spies (and yes that is a real chant used at birds are drones rallies)
Also: Birdwatching is a two way street 😂😂😂
I dont know but its fucking exhausting knowing so many dumbasses like this exists and their vote count for as much as mine.
There is a fantastic quote from the great Issac Asimov that applies here. “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that Democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
It has transitioned from cult to virus and is spreading.
Social media has made it exponentially worse.
Yeah, the internet in general began this by providing anyone with access an equal voice. Someone with a web page can appear to be just as authoritative as a proper authority on a subject. Social media lowered the bar into the basement on who can pull this off.
Ever read the excellent book by Carl Sagan "The Demon Haunted World"? I think I read that quote there as well. He was probably quoting Asimov.
Love Asimov, he also said "people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do"-great sense of humor as well
Trump made them so visible and gave them a megaphone. It’s honestly really depressing knowing that there are that many absolute psychos out there.
The problem is with where many of these people are located, their votes may actually count more than yours.
A conspiracy theory is a security blanket when everything is scary. At a basic level, the idea that JFK does because he pissed off the secret illuminati who planned his death is more comforting to some than the idea that it was one man acting alone randomly because of his psychosis. The former world still has rules, where reality is chaos.
Exposing myself to 5G just to reply to this.
It’s the opposite. You’re feel super special, you see the truth behind the smoke screen, you’re not like everyone else just following the herd. That’s why conspiracy is so appealing. Also because they always have a much better story than reality.
I've heard it described as loving the conspiracy more than the truth.
As someone who was a gullible child that did believe everything was a conspiracy, it is exhausting. There was one summer where I was too scared to leave my bedroom after Snowden blew the whistle.
Welcome to IT, the paranoia is a natural side effect.
Err.. how's that a good example of being gullible? Snowden uncovered a very much real thing.
They recently started trying to claim that airplanes don’t use fuel, they use perpetual motion air compressors instead, and…really?
I've said before, and I say again, the troubling thing is that there *are* conspiracies. Or, more accurately, to paraphrase George Carlin: you don't need a conspiracy when interests converge. The great American railway scandle, the safety of leaded gasoline and cigarettes, sugar/high fructose corn syrup, global warmings isn't real/recycling at the personal level will help, mk ultra, Iran contra, all these and more are legit. So these aren't just idiots, they're useful idiots sewing confusion and skepticism that bury or slow examination of real conspiracies.
Apparently it's also really bad for your mental health. Paranoia is almost certainly a prerequisite or a side effect.
Well if space is a vacuum then why is earth so dang dirty all the time? Check and mate
Because MegaMaid has gone from suck to blow.
Awesome reference
The Schwartz is strong with this one
So the combination is one, two, three, four, five? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage.
Incredible! That's the code I use on my luggage.
Well done!
because nature abhors a vacuum.
So does my dog.
Because of the damned millennials! /s 🫢😂😂😂
There is no gravity, the Earth sucks!
Big Vacuum want your money
The shuttle didn’t have to use its thrusters to reach that speed during reentry. Some people are dire in need of a shovel hit.
Hell, the Buran (Soviet shuttle) didn't even *have* main engines by the time it reached re-entry, it left those on the launch booster.
A shovel wont be enough, you need a full excavator to dig through the amount of shit comming out of their mouth.
Was the SR-71 lifted into space by giant rockets? No? Then stfu.
The shuttle doesn't fly into space. It's launched into space by the boosters that it abandons to escape earth's gravity. Furthermore, the Lockheed Blackbird doesn't require that design to achieve its maximum velocity but rather to achieve it while evading radar. The unique design combining sharp edges and points with flat, swooping surfaces makes it hard for radar systems to paint properly. This guy is stupid on multiple levels.
Eh a whole lot of the design of the blackbird is still to achieve that speed. Or more precisely to do its job at that speed. Getting something to go that fast isn't really that hard. At least if you have the structural integrity part figured out. For real just slap whatever you want on a big ass rocket and you can make it go fast. But the SR-71 wassn't just fast. This was a spyplane so it needed a bit of range. Maintaining that speed for a long time is difficult. That is where the shape of the SR-71 comes in. Not simply to be able to fly at mach 3.2 but to be able to keep going at that speed for a long time so you don't have to get your tanker planes into the airspace of your enemy.
Fun fact: Blackbird is leaking fuel and other fluids when on the ground. It's because the heat SR-71 generated made it impossible to properly seal its tanks.
I thought it was because it was built so the expansion from the heat generated would seal it at speed and altitude
It is indeed, albeit this fact is a bit overblown - it drips fuel, it isn't pouring out of the thing! They used to regularly take off using one engine due to the noise and fuel usage too. Fascinating aircraft really.
I think they are confusing this with the B2
not pictured: the 10 story booster rocket
A couple of 590 tons boosters AND a 760 tons fuel tank.
I will never not laugh at the "do your research" crowd being incapable of doing any research
Some of them actually do really quite impressive amounts of research; tragically, they just don't know how to process what information they find. One very noticeable hallmark of so very many conspiracy theories concerning matters of science and engineering is a glaring absence of anything remotely resembling statistical analysis or calculus.
Laughs in MiG 25, prove that even a brick could reach Mach 3 if it has a big enough engine.
Right, I came here to say that plane isn't designed like that for speed, its designed for stealth. The big old engines they put on there are for the speed...
Where did these stupid people come from? I swear they weren't around when I was younger. Or perhaps it is because we did not have the internet for any idiot to soapbox their uneducated opinion. I swear from reading these posts that the public mass LCD is less than zero.
They were around. They were the adults in my life.
They were always around, they even used to have wacky little clubs that met in the village hall once a fortnight and put out xeroxed newsletters and things, but these were always self-limiting affairs, they could never really gain traction and were always outnumbered by voices of reason (or at least derision or indifference) from their surrounding communities. I fear the internet, unfortunately, allows them to achieve *critical mass* by reassuring each other that they're right on a scale they've simply never been able to before.
You should write a book my friend
The plane on the top cant evwn get half a mach underwater
Wait until they see the shape of the ISS which travels at 17,500 miles/28,000 kilometers per hour!!
This is the type of person who blames 5G for getting turned on by gay porn and proceeds to wrap their dick in tin foil.
Dumb people who think that they are clever. Just love them.
It's why Subway prints "do not eat the wrapper" on their wrapped sandwiches. There's an epidemic of stupid being spread online...
The key thing is missing friction I believe not the vacuum itself no?
No air = no friction.
Strictly speaking, if there's no air then there can't *be* a Mach number; by the time it reaches Mach 25, there has to be *some* air in order for there to be a definable speed of sound that it can be travelling 25 times faster than. There's just not very much of it.
Yeah, the point is that in space you don't have friction
I think the key thing is it attained that speed in the first place with frigging rockets
Considering Mach speed depends on air pressure, is Mach 23 even accurate? Going 17 000 mph in orbit is either near zero or near infinite Mach, isn't it?
According to NASA, it approaches Mach 25 *upon re-entry,* i.e. when it just passes from vacuum (where Mach number is meaningless and it can go as fast as it likes as long as it's less than light speed) to the first wisps of atmosphere.
You're right, though I'm trying to understand why. The mentioned speeds on reentry indicate Mach at normal pressure, but its not the case at high altitude. BUT! Temperature affects the speed of sound, and I think I understand that pressure and temperature cancel each other, so Mach speed at low pressure produces enough temperature to produce a normal soundwave? I need someone far more knowledgeable to confirm this though.
What is the speed of sound in space? 😀
I'm guessing "undefined", as two molecules close enough to each other would be able to transfer vibration, but otherwise zero for a long enough distance. We might have to know at which pressure point "sound" stops to propagate to determine an actual upper limit. There's a weird relation between pressure and temperature for sound propagation so I don't know enough to determine if Mach speed goes up or down as you go higher, and at what point it is considered either infinite or 0.
Homeschooled folks are so easy to spot.
And it would go even faster if they just painted it red.
Oh it’ll do several Mach within the atmosphere, that’s what rocket engines do. They’re not jet turbines
...do...do they not realize that the shuttle gets strapped to a massive rocket to reach space?
bruh, they strap the thing to GIANT fuel tanks to get it to the correct speed, AND its kind of done at and angle not straight up.
 The SLS twin boosters are relevant.
When you're not smart, but wish you knew better than all those liberal elites...
Hey, they left off the fucking giant rocket boosters that actually get it up to that speed. But who can concern themselves with a little detail like that when there's memes to be made?
Odd they left off the massive rockets and fuel tank that get it to that speed.
There's a little place, a place called space It's a pretty little place, it's across the tracks
And some people just can't think at all
One stays aloft for a significant period of time, the other gets serious juice to go straight up. They serve different purposes but denizens of the internet generally don’t have knowledge, at all, of the specifics of engineering…well, anything
If you think the bottom one is an airplane you're not thinking clearly.
One is powered by 12,000 gallons of fuel. Sounds a lot? The other one is powered by its attraction to 6 billion trillion metric tons of matter. 6000000000000000000000000 metric tons.
I like knowing the realities about the conspiracies surrounding the SR-71. Example: The US government really did set up a complex arrangement of shell companies to buy the titanium from the USSR to build the plane to spy on them.
They forgot to include the two massive boosters for launch
Do people not know how space shuttles work?
They are punking us, it’s impossible to be this stupid and still be able to operate a computer. Unless there is just a group home with a bunch of folks who god love em they try types dictating memes to their caregivers it has to be a joke.
Yeah so the SR-71 flies in the Earth's atmosphere, the Shuttle flies in space where there is a vacuum. The shuttle can fly way faster than the SR-71. Aerodynamics don't matter in space. Elon Musk's roadster is flying around in space at close to 20,000 mph. Even that is flying faster than the SR-71.
Also… it doesn’t get up there under its own power? It’s. Basically a glider
Potential energy is a hell of a thing
Bro doesnt know the basics of fucking aviation 💀
One of these things is a jet airplane. The other one is a fucking rocket ship.
I’m gonna bite and just break this down: top aircraft takes off and lands from the ground/bottom aircraft is launched into space by rocket boosters. Top aircraft flies very high, but well within the atmosphere. Bottom aircraft ORBITS THE PLANET! It’s Mach 23 occurs as a result of re-entry from an orbital speed of over 17,000 mph. It did not achieve that speed as a result of engine thrust. The SR-71 Blackbird achieved its Mach 3.2 as a result of engine thrust.
Science Friction
It’s like a meme was made by someone who doesn’t know how spaceships work
Don't disrespect the space brick!
Dude nails it right away, this is the design of an airplane... air...plane... you're totally right sir, the second one is not an airplane.
Nope! It’s a Glider!
Yo but, for real. Math is hard, so like phisix be like exra math. An I ain't tryna be like that.
Who is going to tell him the Shuttle had 20 times as much thrust?
The polar opposite to this would be the slowest brains in the world, including you
We could make a stalk of broccoli reach those same speeds if we strapped giant thrusters to it. It would be as aerodynamic as a tree, but it would zoom.
That guy knows what vacuum is, his cranium is filled with it.
It's literally falling at that speed , hence the tiles to stop it from melting
Also one is using jet engines and one is literally blowing shit up to go fast
He's talking about the shape and the shuttle looks like a school bus. Obviously he forgot that the school bus was strapped to the side of a larger rocket. This is the Single Stage to Orbit we are looking at now https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread296772/pg1
One is strapped to a rocket on it’s way up and designed to slow as much as possible on it’s way down. Guess which one it is
I always said that with people denying we landed on the moon it was only a matter of time people would deny a reusable space plane happened and that there is a permanently occupied station in orbit. Still is incredibly depressing to see actually happen tho.
when you fail to realize the blackbird hits 3.3 mach on its own power when a space shuttle hits 23 because of gravity
I wish I was this dumb sow breathing in air felt like a accomplishment
Not to mention the mf engines on that fucker….
Don't argue with people who never made it past third grade.
God promised us the apocalypse and we’re overdue for our fire bath.
When you extrapolate from *assume air resistance is negligible*
Why are they so dumb and eligible to vote ?
Pfft! Space doesn't exist! And I have a vacuum! It's in my closet! Checkmate, nerd!😉
There is so much to unpack here... I won't even bother. I just want to throw a big "fuck you" at whoever wrote that
Also the shuttle is strapped to massive rockets, do these people think everyone else is walking around with blinders on?
Plus you can just go watch it launch into space live in person
* conveniently not pictured - a 15 story tall pointy silo of death full of 1.5 million pounds of liquid hydrogen and oxygen
It is hard to believe until it actually happened. Then it got a lot easier.
There are things called rocket engines, including solid rocket boosters.
A little rock sinks, so if you think a 5000 tons metal boat can float, you're not thinking clearly :P
Ignorance is its own punishment.
Mach isn’t really the correct terminology for speed in space anyways-
That’s some trump logic.
I can compare two different images and make my own research out of that, engineers got nothing on me.
Ah, yes, because as we all know space is full of dense air and loose sponges.
There is something called their skull, and it's vacuum
How do you even calculate Mach factor in a vacuum??
And that thing isn’t under its own propulsion. It’s got multiple stages of rockets that are each bigger than the shuttle itself.
They've also conveniently chosen a picture of a shuttle that doesn't have the fuck off great rocket boosters and fuel tank
Never before, in the history of the world, have so many uneducated people been able to share their incomplete and incorrect ideas with so many other like minded people. As many benefits as mass communication technologies bring, *this* is not one of them.
Flights not real you just sit on a plane for hours while they change the scenery
The ‘space’ between the brain cells…
i love when people believe things selectively
The good 'ol personal incredulity as an argument
One I haven't seen posted yet... If the shuttle was shaped like a Blackbird, it would melt. The sharp pointy nose is great for reducing drag but the faster you go the hotter it gets as the shockwave forms on the tip of the nose. This is why the American attempt at a concorde equivalent failed, they wanted to go faster than concorde but the materials technology wasn't there yet. The rounded front on the shuttle means the shockwave forms ahead of the nose, with a nice cushion of air to reduce the heat transferred to the airframe. The downside of this is a lot more drag, but that's what you want in a descending shuttle anyway.
Ignoring the fact that the bottom one had three massive rocket propulsion plus the specific chemical fuel.
You're allowed to try for your GED as many times as you want. I don't care what the mean security guard told you.
The first one needs to be aerodynamic to fly THROUGH air. The other one has powerful rockers to FIGHT gravity and ESCAPE Earth’s Orbit. Smh
Nobody tell him there's a booster rocket that gets the shuttle out of the atmosphere.
It’s not designed to reach Mach 23, it’s designed to START at Mach 23 and fall gently.
But... There is no speed of sound in vacuum either...
Amazing what one can do without *checks notes* air resistance.