[AR] Re: Just where does space start?
- From: David Weinshenker <daze39@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 11:35:28 -0700
Bill Claybaugh wrote:
> Perhaps it would be best to simply accept the mathematically
> convenient "100 km" number proposed by the EU and apparently
> accepted by this community for the last 20 years.
I prefer to accept the (equally mathematically convenient) "400 k ft."
figure of the Space Shuttle "entry interface" threshold. This at least
is a convenient number with the weight of an engineering (rather than
a political) decision behind it: that's the value someone came up with
for the altitude of the boundary between "coasting" and "gliding" flight.
No doubt it's biased on the high side, as is perfectly appropriate for
the intended use: the guidance logic would want to stop "zeroing out"
the dynamic pressure effects before they actually reached significant
levels. I'm not sure what the altitude is where the aero effects were
actually noticeable in the numbers.
-dave w
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