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Supersonic retropropulsion is not the brand new area of investigation that the Angry Astronaut says it is. It's only new if current people at NASA and SpaceX do not understand or appreciate history. Which is apparently the case!
My 1965-vintage edition of Sighard F. Hoerner's opus "Fluid Dynamic Drag" has a plot of drag coefficient versus jet thrust, for a retrorocket plume emanating from the heat shield center of a Mercury capsule shape, tested at Mach 2 in a wind tunnel in 8.2-inch diameter size. The reference Hoerner cites for this plot is a NASA Tech note titled "Thin Retro Jet", TN-D-751, dated to 1961, written by Charczenko. He also gives two other closely-related refences: Wasko "From a Sphere" TN-D-1535, and Peterson "Four Retrorockets" TN-D-1300. These citations did not give a date. The 3 relevant citations (numbers 22a, b, and c) are listed on page 20-9 of this edition of Hoerner's book. The plot is Figure 27 in Chapter 20, located on page 20-11 in Hoerner's book.
It is very clear that NASA was doing serious engineering testing of retropropulsion effects in supersonic flow, way back in the early 1960's.
The modern "experts" seem to be unaware of it. Some "experts" they are!
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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