Twitter gardener friend has watched armageddon too many times. His reply has nothing to do with what mr astronaut said lol.
He is not wrong, though…
I guess technically, but Kelly is talking about an aircraft which implies the craft is still in atmosphere and therefore Mach can still be calculated.
The original thread was started by Neil deGrasse Tyson saying that Maverick would be “splattered” during ejection at mach 10. Scott Kelly responds saying he went on a space walk from the ISS at mach 25. The gardener is technically right that mach numbers don’t really apply in a near vacuum. It’s also kind of off topic because we know the Darkstar is in the atmosphere and not in space, and therefore there is no “re-entry”. But Scott is right that the real issue would be heat and not getting splattered.
I also want to point out that we don’t actually see Maverick eject, and it’s likely that he would have been ejected in a capsule (like in several real aircraft like the B-58) rather than just thrown out of the plane in his pressure suit as Scott suggests.
It’s also a fucking movie and who cares if it could really happen??
I just like planes 😭
Yes, but the gardener guy is specifically talking about the ISS flying in a vacuum. So he is not wrong. I find the comment of that Bruno dude just condescending.
It’s a condescending response to a condescending attempt to correct an expert’s comment with something that wasn’t even relevant to what was actually being said. I don’t really like the appeal to authority, but the snark was deserved IMO.
Plus space being a true vacuum is a myth anyways. It might not be dense enough for sound to propagate, but there’s plenty of material out there. The Earth’s atmosphere actually extends past the moon and the Sun gives off a steady stream of particles that are the dominant force (besides gravity and planetary magnetic fields for those that have them) out to the Kuiper belt.
Just because an aircraft is capable of mach 10 in atmosphere doesn’t mean that you would call that speed “mach 10” everywhere. Gardener is arguing semantics at best.
He is wrong in the context that Kelly is talking about. Kelly mentions going through atmosphere, aka not a vacuum
The ISS does not travel in a full vaccum, so it still technically has a mach number
Do they actually calculate mach that way when they say a plane can go mach 3? Or do they just use the speed of sound at 1 atm?
I would hypothesize that the indicator for mach and air speed are decoupled from each other, as a true mach reading would likely give an indication of how hard a plane is working to push itself through the air.
Just a guess though.
It is calculated according to the speed of sound at the altitude you’re in, and measured using a difference of pressure in the pitot tube.
