• Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    The missile would have to cancel out the speed of the plane before achieving any meaningful acceleration.

    • yggdar@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      To be fair, speed is relative. Imagine a plane flies at 500 km/h and is pursued by another plane at the same speed. If the first plane fires a rocket backwards that accelerates for a total of 200 km/h, then for an observer on the ground the rocket will still do 300 km/h, in the same direction as the planes. However, the guys in the second plane will see a rocket approaching them at 200 km/h.

      Wind resistance, aerodynamics, etc. will have an impact, but it can work.

      • waigl@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        To be fair, speed is relative.

        Sure, but the relevant speed up there is relative to the air around you. The missile will have a negative air speed at first, than accelerate to positive, briefly passing through 0 in between, which comes with weird consequences for lift and steering.

    • OutsizedWalrus@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Which would be meaningless. Those missile accelerate to like Mach 4 in a second.

      A plane going forward at Mach 2 would add .5 second to a missile fired backwards to get to Mach 4.