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A comment on China Eastern flight MU5735 crashes, 132 people were on board. Parent comment

Re:China Eastern flight MU5735 crashes, 132 people were on b... by taneq on Monday March 21, 2022 @06:41AM (#30752431)
Terminal velocity depends on the object. The terminal velocity of a skydiver is around 200km/h. I'd imagine the terminal velocity of an airliner pointed straight down would be significantly higher even without the engines running. With engines at cruising power they move 700km/h+ in horizontal flight, I'd imagine they could exceed that by a lot in a vertical dive.
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Re:China Eastern flight MU5735 crashes, 132 people were on b... by belter on Monday March 21, 2022 @09:13AM (#30753724)
NASA has this online Terminal Velocity calculator. For drag coeficient typical values for commercial large planes are in the order of 0.05.

"Terminal Velocity Calculator":

https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/termv.html

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Re:China Eastern flight MU5735 crashes, 132 people were on b... by taneq on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @09:08AM (#30765572)
Best rough figure I could find for weight of a loaded 737 is around 40 tons, frontal area I'm guesstimating is roughly a 3m diameter cylinder plus ~0.5m average thickness of the 28m wingspan giving 21m^2? For which the calculator gives 262.8m/s or 943.2km/h.
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Re:China Eastern flight MU5735 crashes, 132 people were on b... by belter on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @04:48AM (#30776387)
Not far from current preliminary estimates.

"China Plane Was Travelling At Speed Of Sound As It Slammed Into Hill":

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/china-jets-fatal-dive-took-i...

"The Boeing Co. 737-800 was knifing through the air at more than 640 miles (966 kilometers) per hour, and at times may have exceeded 700 mph, according to data from Flightradar24, a website that tracks planes.

"The preliminary data indicate it was near the speed of sound," said John Hansman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology astronautics and aeronautics professor who reviewed Bloomberg's calculation of the jet's speed. "It was coming down steep.""

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