06-08-2021, 09:35 AM
(06-07-2021, 08:07 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Mach (pronounced "mock" in American English and "mack" in British English, I believe) number is used to describe the speed of a supersonic aircraft. Mach 1 is the speed of sound, Mach 2 is twice the speed of sound, and so on. Hypersonic is the term applied to Mach 5 and above.
Other than astronauts (who were basically riding ballistic missiles) the fastest speed attained by a human was Mach 6.72 in the X-15 rocket plane. The fastest operational aircraft was the SR-71 spy plane, the fastest acknowledged speed being Mach 3.2. It has been rumored that there may be a successor spy plane reaching perhaps Mach 6, possibly a drone-I cannot confirm.
Governments know when a spy satellite will be overhead, so they may periodically attempt to hide their activities. But that may not work if a super fast spy plane makes an unannouced visit.
The trick could be a race in miniaturization and maximal thrust. Geosynchronous orbit would be perfect for sustained monitoring of a suspicious location... let us say a missile-testing site. That is also the first thing that would go down in a space war as an obvious target. Considering that much of today's communications are effectively satellite communications (if you get your broadcast TV from -- a PBS channel in Detroit on WTVS, then WTVS still gets its programming from a satellite feed of PBS material. Knock out the PBS feed, and WTVS must rely upon reruns. That's fine with Sesame Street, but not with news programs.
Communications from the USA, except from such entities as FoX Propaganda Channel, are comparatively innocuous. But figure that America could end up in a war against a tyrannical regime committing active genocide. Imagine that you are President of the United States, and you can order a missile to destroy some geosynchronous "bird" that offers an unrelenting stream of hate messages toward the pariahs of that regimes and warns that the US Army will be an army of robbers and rapists. Obviously you want that shut down. So you give orders to destroy that "bird" and replace its signals with yours or those of your allies.
To confound an army by disrupting its command is as much to defeat it as is to occupy territory.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.