anyone been to a rocket launch (from miles away, obviously) to compare?
anyone been to a rocket launch (from miles away, obviously) to compare?
I wish. I was at Cape Canaveral in the summer on 1973 and got to watch one of the Saturn 1B's doing it's slow crawler commute to the launch pad for one of the Skylab missions but that's as close as I've come.
I can't speak for the sound of a rocket launch from a viewing area, but they certainly won't wow you with vibrations or speed from the distance you normally see them.
It took a couple of seconds for the Space Shuttle to reach 60 MPH (vertically, and weighing a couple of thousand tones mind you) and by that time the top fuel will be finished and decelerating down to triple that speed. The fastest part of a rocket's acceleration happens up in the way up in the atmosphere where the air is thinner, the fuel load is reduced, and the gravity turn has pointed the vehicle sideways so that it is not fighting so much against the downward force of gravity. That's too far away for it to look as awesome as a top fuel dragster.
Definitely going for sound/vibration something like this (please don't listen to the audio off of a laptop's speaker)
I recall the V10 F1 cars being ear-bleeding loud at 15-20k rpm (140dB?), guessing top fuel is not just louder but deeper (more kick-in-the-chest vibrations?)