Apollo sonic booms

Given the speed of Apollo command modules as they re-enter the Earth's
atmosphere, did they create sonic booms that could be heard by people on the
surface of the ocean? Or was that acoustic energy "funneled" upwards, and
away from the ground?

At one of the reentries, the TV commentator mentioned a sonic boom.

I can't remember if it was double.

Regards

Carsten Nielsen
Denmark

In article . com,
"Carsten Nielsen" wrote:

At one of the reentries, the TV commentator mentioned a sonic boom.

I can't remember if it was double.

It should have been a single boom, as the Apollo craft was a single
surface exposed to hypersonic air. The double boom we hear from the
shuttle is due to the fact that the nose, wings and fin all create their
own, separate shock waves.

Orval Fairbairn wrote:

In article . com,
"Carsten Nielsen" wrote:

At one of the reentries, the TV commentator mentioned a sonic boom.

I can't remember if it was double.

It should have been a single boom, as the Apollo craft was a single
surface exposed to hypersonic air. The double boom we hear from the
shuttle is due to the fact that the nose, wings and fin all create their
own, separate shock waves.

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral...CS_4-16-01.pdf
Page 15:

John Stonsifer about the situation aboard the recovery ship:

"But the first clue we always had was the sonic boom,
because when Apollo came back in,
it was coming pretty much over the landing area,
almost straight down,
and you knew when you got that "boom, boom"
we'd always yell "It's overhead".
So then we began to really start lookingfor it."

--
Jürgen Kozlik

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:38:55 +0100, Jürgen Kozlik
wrote:

John Stonsifer about the situation aboard the recovery ship:

....Ah, but then there's the one from the A15 reentry, overheard on NBC
live coverage. That's where two deckhands on the carrier were rather
graphic about the twin booms, and had the network's S&P weenies having
kittens over the "naughty words" used to describe the experience.

OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[