danniemcq wrote: i wonder is there any brain surgeons who build rockets in their spare time
seamus wrote: It's actually not *that* simple. Well it is, it's geometry. You need to get the two lines of travel of the aircraft, in X,Y co-ordinate terms. Then you need to figure out the point at which those two lines cross. Last but not least, you need to figure out how long it takes plane A to get to that point, and where plane B will be at that instant in time. Remember that if both aircraft are travelling at the same speed, and the aircraft above begins a dive, he will drop behind the lower aircraft (negating any acceleration due to gravity), because he is travelling slower on the horizontal plane. Yes, it is rocket science Actually, I worked it out (God bless excel). Imagine the two aircraft are infinitesimally small points in space, travelling at around 800km/h. Aircraft A is at 100m (for the sake of the example), and aircraft B is at 433m. If aircraft B dips by 5 degrees, it will reach the same altitude as aircraft A after 17.316692 seconds, negating acceleration due to gravity. At this point, A will have travelled 3809.67224m, and B will have travelled 3795.091585m in the horizontal axis. That is, Aircraft B will be about 14.5m behind aircraft A. So they would collide (because an aircraft isn't a point in space). Interestingly, if aircraft B took a much sharper dive, say 15 degrees, it would reach the same altitude much sooner (~5.9 seconds!) but it would be much further behind - around 39 metres.
BrokenArrows wrote: Do you really have nothing better to do than work this type of stuff out. I am however impressed but you could have just made it up as a dont think that anyone will bother to check it.
kaizersoze wrote: The BEEB have removed the pic. It was there earlier today. I wonder why?
