Slashdot Mirror
Did Bat Hitch a Ride To Space On Discovery?
suraj.sun writes "A bat was seen clinging to the external fuel tank of the Space Shuttle Discovery before its launch on Sunday, apparently clung for dear life to the side of the tank as the spaceship lifted off.
The shuttle accelerates to an orbital velocity of 17,500 milers per hour, which is 25 times faster than the speed of sound, in just over eight minutes. That's zero to 100 mph in 10 seconds.
Did it make it into space? No one knows yet. But photos of Discovery as it cleared the launch tower showed a tiny speck on the side of the tank. When those photos were blown up, it became apparent that the speck was a bat."
Except the article stated that IR cameras showed that part of the tank never dropped below 60 and the bat never dropped below 70.
And they're not accelerating upwards (I hope)
some of those crazy cars go at 9.8ft/s^2 (+ or - a little for air resistance)
I think you mean 9.8ms^-2 ;-).
Metric: get it right, first time.
Boundary layer (at least at subsonic speeds) where laminar flow slows is barely a tenth of an inch thick. Brian would have been a fair bit thicker than that, so would have certainly been exposed to significant aerodynamic forces as the Shuttle accelerated.