so minimally that far... this was pretty good from wiki:

Shock waves form when the speed of a fluid changes by more than the speed of sound.[3] At the region where this occurs sound waves travelling against the flow reach a point where they cannot travel any further upstream and the pressure progressively builds in that region, and a high pressure shock wave rapidly forms.

Shock waves are not conventional sound waves; a shock wave takes the form of a very sharp change in the gas properties on the order of a few mean free paths (roughly micrometers at atmospheric conditions) in thickness. Shock waves in air are heard as a loud "crack" or "snap" noise. Over longer distances a shock wave can change from a nonlinear wave into a linear wave, degenerating into a conventional sound wave as it heats the air and loses energy. The sound wave is heard as the familiar "thud" or "thump" of a sonic boom, commonly created by the supersonic flight of aircraft.

It sometimes bugs me when people assume a "sonic boom" only occurs when the aircraft passes into, and then out of, supersonic flight. When in fact, the boom is a pressure wave that continuously propogates along the flight path, more of a "sonic roar" and only a boom because YOU aren't moving.


(ps. this isn't a comment on anything people have said here, just anecdotal)

No one is saying it is money well spent, except you. But that doesn't mean you can't marvel at what it is. Pyramids are a terrible example of slave labor, but they are still impressive. Governments are good at spending money, every once in awhile, the product of their spending is very impressive...even if ill conceived.

>> ^messenger:

Defending a $320 billion jet program by highlighting its efficiency?>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^robbersdog49:
I'm not seeing anything impressive about this. The jet engine has been around for a long time, and the Harrier was doing this forty years ago. The only difference is the electronics controlling it, and you can see that in action in a £200 model helicopter I can control with my phone.
The only reaction this video got from me was a 'why has it taken them so long to do this and why do people think it's impressive?'

You could make the same comparison in computers, or cars. This isn't a revolution in planes, but an evolution. And is still thrilling to people who love this type of thing. Why would you see an action movie, seen one seen'em all? Then answer is you like seeing them. @Jinx summed it up quite well, it has a huge power plant enabling supersonic flight and maintain a VERY highly stable hover state without using as much fuel. Even with that huge power plant and strange mechanical and aerodynamic arrangements to accommodate vertical abilities, manages to be "stelthy".
The beauty of some things is the combination of abilities that are normally thought to be mutually exclusive. It would be the same as a truck coming out that can carry 2 tons and still get better gas millage than a Prius, very worthy to note. If NASA came out with a new shuttle that was highly refined and enabled 4 times as much payload into space, would you knock it because "shuttles are 30 years old"?

Defending a $320 billion jet program by highlighting its efficiency?>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^robbersdog49:
I'm not seeing anything impressive about this. The jet engine has been around for a long time, and the Harrier was doing this forty years ago. The only difference is the electronics controlling it, and you can see that in action in a £200 model helicopter I can control with my phone.
The only reaction this video got from me was a 'why has it taken them so long to do this and why do people think it's impressive?'

You could make the same comparison in computers, or cars. This isn't a revolution in planes, but an evolution. And is still thrilling to people who love this type of thing. Why would you see an action movie, seen one seen'em all? Then answer is you like seeing them. @Jinx summed it up quite well, it has a huge power plant enabling supersonic flight and maintain a VERY highly stable hover state without using as much fuel. Even with that huge power plant and strange mechanical and aerodynamic arrangements to accommodate vertical abilities, manages to be "stelthy".
The beauty of some things is the combination of abilities that are normally thought to be mutually exclusive. It would be the same as a truck coming out that can carry 2 tons and still get better gas millage than a Prius, very worthy to note. If NASA came out with a new shuttle that was highly refined and enabled 4 times as much payload into space, would you knock it because "shuttles are 30 years old"?

>> ^robbersdog49:

I'm not seeing anything impressive about this. The jet engine has been around for a long time, and the Harrier was doing this forty years ago. The only difference is the electronics controlling it, and you can see that in action in a £200 model helicopter I can control with my phone.
The only reaction this video got from me was a 'why has it taken them so long to do this and why do people think it's impressive?'


You could make the same comparison in computers, or cars. This isn't a revolution in planes, but an evolution. And is still thrilling to people who love this type of thing. Why would you see an action movie, seen one seen'em all? Then answer is you like seeing them. @Jinx summed it up quite well, it has a huge power plant enabling supersonic flight and maintain a VERY highly stable hover state without using as much fuel. Even with that huge power plant and strange mechanical and aerodynamic arrangements to accommodate vertical abilities, manages to be "stelthy".

The beauty of some things is the combination of abilities that are normally thought to be mutually exclusive. It would be the same as a truck coming out that can carry 2 tons and still get better gas millage than a Prius, very worthy to note. If NASA came out with a new shuttle that was highly refined and enabled 4 times as much payload into space, would you knock it because "shuttles are 30 years old"?

>> ^Asmo:
The problem with belief or lack of belief in the 'theory' of evolution is moot, by using the term theory science already admits that it has not been proven beyond doubt...
Hypothesis
Theory
Law


I'm not sure if this is correct asmo, at least as far as i understand it. You state those 3 like they're the stages of a scientific fact, but that's actually not true.

Firstly, when referring to scientific theory and law, there's no definitive proof for anything which might constitute a fact in the context i used.

Secondly, this ties into the first, the best we have for anything is a law - which describes observations that we have witnessed, or a theory - which is a hypothesis or group of hypotheses which can be tested and shown to be true and tries to explain why something is as we witnessed. The law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the theory tries to explain why.

We can't send stuff to a panel of administrators who put a stamp on a piece of paper and say "Yep, this is now a law, we will not permit the universe to disprove our quantification and understanding of this observation." It's not like some AD&D universe where we can check the back of the book for strict values and procedures. All we can do is spot patterns in nature and try to explain them to the best of our abilities.

I typed a bit more but realised i'm almost quoting this website which i didn't intend to do:
http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistry101/a/lawtheory.htm

Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law :-

"A law differs from a scientific theory in that it does not posit a mechanism or explanation of phenomena: it is merely a distillation of the results of repeated observation. As such, a law is limited in applicability to circumstances resembling those already observed, and is often found to be false when extrapolated.
Simplified: a law states what we observe, it doesn't try to explain it. It often is found lacking and as such we state boundaries for the law, as below:

Ohm's law only applies to constant currents, Newton's law of universal gravitation only applies in weak gravitational fields, the early laws of aerodynamics such as Bernoulli's principle do not apply in case of compressible flow such as occurs in transonic and supersonic flight, Hooke's law only applies to strain below the elastic limit, etc."

As Payback already pointed out, it's definitely not supersonic.
Also, one of the characteristics of a sonic boom is the loud CRACK that you get as it passes by. This is loud enough to deafen people and shatter windows for at least 100 meters around. (Probably further.) So if that had really been a supersonic flight, the lense to that camera would be cracked and the operator would be deaf.

It's still darn awesome though.