Word: airstreams
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...airplanes fly faster & faster, bailing out gets harder & harder. The airstream, pouring past the plane at 500 m.p.h., smacks the would-be "caterpillar" with the force of a padded pile driver. If he survives this blow, he runs the risk of being slammed against the tail surfaces...
...back toward the belly of the plane. At the end is a second door with two leaves. The rear leaf flies off into space. The forward leaf is pushed out hydraulically to form a windscreen. When escaping crewmen slide down the chute, the screen softens the blow from the airstream, and the deadly tail surfaces pass above them harmlessly...
...oddly soothing sensation. The cockpit is remarkably quiet for a military airplane. Little engine noise gets into it; most of the roar and snarl is blown back with the wake. The air ducts grumble below the floor; a ventilator hisses. When the plane is up to speed, the airstream rushing over the canopy makes a moderate, roar. There is hardly any vibration. Experienced pilots say that the plane handles "like a kiddie-car." When it makes a "low pass," flying close to the ground at 550 m.p.h., objects far ahead seem to vanish before the eye has time to take...
...added to the compressed air by combustion shoves a jet of hot, high-speed gas out the rear end with a noise like thunder. There is nothing inside a typical ramjet except fuel nozzles and a gridlike "flame-holder" to keep the flame from being blown out by the airstream...
...plastic of the astrodome had broken. The pressure inside, instantly released, had shot George Hart up into the 250 m.p.h. airstream which tossed him back to tumble, without a parachute, more than 3½ miles into the troubled ocean. Said a colleague: "I hope he was knocked out. It would take almost a minute and a half to fall 19,000 feet...