A few comments more or less relevant:
Rockets: Until I moved to this place, where there really isn’t much open real estate, I was a model rocket buff too. I built a two-stage rocket with only, I believe, E or F engines in it. It was designed to go supersonic and thus accelerated very quickly, as in you couldn’t see it leave the little pad. But each time I launched it, sure enough it was followed by a distinct “crack” like the sound of a .22 rifle shot. Also, anyone who has had a bullet go by his ear has heard a sonic “crack” from the round, the delay of course depending on the distance of the shooter.
Funny thing, first time I had the experience from inside the airplane, as I wrote in my newspaper at the time “I expected an angel to reach down and touch me on the head or something.” Nope. It just got quieter and smoother. What a letdown. That old F-4C just plowed right through it and the only people affected were those night shift guys down on the Gulf of Mexico oil rigs cursing at us as we flew over at Mach 1.4 while they slept, our shock wave (which, remember, the plane is dragging behind it, which is why the flight crew can’t hear it) having lifted those roughnecks right off their sheets. In the F-104, F-18 and F-15, I remember a tiny little buffet as we went transonic and then when we hit Mach 1 – nothing. All these flights were over various places just off the Gulf Coast, but anyone who has FAA charts knows there are supersonic military operating ranges out west over the desert, just as there are just off all the coasts.
Chuck Yeager’s supersonic flight at the Sound Barrier Commemorative was in a two-seat F-15 in 1997 at Edwards’ airshow, I believe. There used to be watch ads showing Yeager standing in front of this F-15, which had “Glamorous Glennis” painted on it. But supersonic flight at modern airshows is virtually never, ever done. It’s such a no-no to go Mach 1 over populated areas, I remember what a huge row erupted in one instance, in the late '80s, in which a pair of astronauts, inbound to Ellington Houston from the Cape in a T-38, “accidentally” went barely supersonic during their letdown toward EFD. It broke some store windows and my editor had me call NASA for a quote, which was “No comment.”
As for the loudness of the B-1, it’s all relative. Remember, the GE and PW F100 and F110 and other engines that power the B-1, F-15 and 16, are much quieter than the J79’s that were in the Phantom, F-8 and F-104, and J57s that were in the F-100, F101, B-52B-G, and just about every other airplane of the time. Anything with four military turbjets in it is going to rock your ears. But even louder still were the old Cold War super engines, the J75s that were in the F-105, F106 and U-2. Monstrous engines. And the Martin P6M Seamaster had four of them with afterburners! And I am old enough that I remember a B-58 doing a low-level flyover of my hometown with its four J79s burning for all they were worth. It sounded like the end of the world, but nothing has deafened me quite like the year our planes were parked under the approach end of the runway at Oshkosh for the weekend.
As usual, a Concord was there, and it was taking off about four times a day, with our group stationed right under it. Each one of its four Olympus turbojets produced 38,000 lbs of thrust in afterburner, or, all together, the equivalent thrust of more than eight F-4’s in afterburner! It sounded like Hell with the lid off.
And I have a question: I’ve seen a couple of shuttle landings at Edwards, and a bunch on TV. Does anyone know why it produces that double sonic boom – a sort of “ba-boom” – that announces its arrival every time?
TOM
