Posted on 04/16/2014 7:57:14 AM PDT by doug from upland
Quiz Time! Today’s Problem: Chasing Daylight AUGUST 28, 2008, 12:38 PM My 11-year-old son came up with a good question the other day:
Assuming a plane never had to stop to refuel, could it fly around the equator so fast that it never saw the sun set?
To find out, I checked with one of my favorite online columnists: Patrick Smith, who writes “Ask the Pilot” for Salon.com.
Before I reveal his reply, want to take a minute to answer the question in your head, so you can see how you did?
I’ll wait right here.
OK, here we go:
(Excerpt) Read more at pogue.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Just go to relatively near one of the poles and the daylight lasts 24 hr.
no
At a solstice.
One of the most poorly-written pieces I’ve read in a long time. This passes as journalism?
Depends on the Latitude, time of year and plane speed.
24 one-hour time zones, the planet is about 24,000 miles around, so if you’re going 1000 MPH or so you could do it. But you’d have to be in some kind of military plane now that the Concorde has gone away.
Wow now I’ve read the article, that is probably the most over-detailed explanation possible of why you need to be supersonic.
Near the equator, the earth is 25,000 miles around, meaning the plane would need to exceed a speed of 1000 mph to constantly stay in daylight. Your standard jumbo jet has a cruising speed a little over 400 mph, so the answer is no.
My calculation.
Diameter of the earth, about 24,000 miles.
Length of day, 24 hours. Duh. It needs to go about 1000 miles an hour. Faster than commercial flights.
I don’t know if there’s an aircraft capable of sustained speeds of 1,000 miles an hour.
If you flush the quarterback in the southern hemisphere, does he go down clockwise or counterclockwise?
Apparently, many who are making comments did not read the article.
Concorde does 1350. But how can it be refueled in flight several times? Has this venture ever been done by a military jet?
Answers.com > Wiki Answers > Categories > Science > Astronomy > Can a plane fly faster than the earth rotates?
Can a plane fly faster than the earth rotates?
In: Astronomy, Physics, Air Travel [Edit categories]
Answer:
There used to be a few planes fast enough, but I believe that all of the SR-71’s have been retired. “Sled drivers” have written about making the Sun rise in the west, as the “Blackbird” flew west across the Pacific Ocean faster than the Earth could rotate away from it.
There are rumors of a new replacement for the SR-17 71 nicknamed “Aurora”. It would certainly be fast enough to do so.(Darned typos!)
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The above answer is not entirely correct. Yes, the SR-71 (not SR-17, which does not exist) could fly faster than the Earth rotates. But it is certainly not the only plane that can or could do so. Planes that are much slower than the SR-71 can fly faster than the Earth’s rotation too. The Earth rotates at approximately 1000 miles per hour (Goddard Space Flight Center on Earth’s rotation speed: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970401c.html). The Concorde, a plane much slower than the SR-71, flew at an average cruising speed of Mach 2.02 or 1,549 MPH or 2,495 KPH. That is already over 500 MPH over the Earth’s rotation speed.
Since most military fighter planes that travel at supersonic speeds fly well in excess of the Concorde’s average cruising speed, one can presume that most fighter planes, the SR-71 included, can exceed Earth’s rotation speed as well (in fact, by a long shot).
Mach 1 is the speed of sound, which is 767 MPH or 1,235 KPH. The SR-71 flew at speeds over Mach 3.2, which is 2,454 MPH or 3,952 KPH. That’s almost 2.5 times the speed of the Earth’s rotation. So planes that are much slower than the SR-71 can out-fly the Earth’s rotation/sunrise/sunset. However, a conventional non-supersonic plane (which typically flies anywhere between 450 and 650 MPH). will not be able to fly faster than the Earth’s rotation. But a race between the SR-71 and the sunrise or sunset is no competition! The plane will win every time by a substantial margin.
Actually Doug, although the 1000MPH responses are well thought out, they are wrong. If you were only to make one revolution around the earth without seeing the sun set, you could go much slower than 1000MPH.
You would need to go 1000MPH only if you wanted to take off and land at the same time of day. I think the right answer is 500MPH, but I’ll have to think about that longer.
Good question ... in that one needs to ask why flush rotation differs.
And from that comes other questions ... such as ,,,
What makes the Earth rotate?
What makes the ocean's tides?
What makes the Earth's magnetic poles reverse "every few hundred thousand years"?*
What makes the Moon-face toward the Earth constant?
* The pole reversal fact comes from the book Darwin's Ghost by Steve Jones ... page 252.
“Chasing daylight” is a very common Southern saying. Simply means, one is wasting time.
I think that the SR-71 had the speed to do it
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