NextaFeb 16

🤯 A visual physics lesson at 80 km/h.

Enthusiasts launched a man from a moving truck in the opposite direction - at the same speed the car was traveling.

The experiment spectacularly showed how relative speed works.

Show threadAnthropyFeb 17
@nexta now do it at 400km/h from a jet, it'd only be like ~30G of acceleration 
Show threadsmells of bikesFeb 17
@anthropy @nexta At the height of Cold War madness, we did this with the A-5: it dumped its bomb load out the back on tracks at up to Mach 2, so it would have zero forward speed at release and drop straight down.
(It was never used.)
Show threadsmells of bikesFeb 17
@anthropy @nexta on rereading, it dump out the back at some speed but not mach2
Show threadToddZ â“‹Feb 17

@smellsofbikes

Ah - I was just wondering what kind of bomb-launching railgun they had in the fuselage!

I'd never heard of the A-5's unusual bomb bay configuration. Wikipedia explains that the payload "was propelled rearward at about 50 feet per second":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_A-5_Vigilante#Design

North American A-5 Vigilante - Wikipedia

Show threadsmells of bikes
@toddz My uncle flew a lot of exotic stuff -- he's the only person I know with a Mach 2+ pin -- and he told me about the A5. I was quite young so I might be responsible for the inaccuracy.
Feb 17 at 5:15amWeb