Talk:Sonic rainboom (event)/@comment-71.193.254.124-20111206011629/@comment-4446297-20120816193740

"Lolwut? M33? I think M1.2, because that wouldn't crush all her bones and burn her flesh into thin air. So ehm, I think your 'friend' needs some education first."

While I agree that Mach 1.2 is a far more reasonable speed for a Sonic Rainboom, a pure "survivability" argument doesn't work. Here's why:

A jet fighter pilot once had to eject from his aircraft at just above mach 1 and altitude below 10,000 feet. At that speed, the wind broke both his legs and one arm, and nearly ripped one of his legs off. And he was only going mach 1 for a tiny fraction of a second because the enormous drag almost instantly declerated him to subsonic speeds.

If Rainbow Dash's flesh and bones were the same strength as a human's, sustained supersonic flight would tear her limb from limb.

This doesn't change the fact that mach 33 is absurd. A meteor the size of a marble goes that fast, but through air hundreds or thousands of times thinner than the air near Earth's surface, and it creates a fireball visible from hundreds of miles away. Down in the troposphere where humans and ponies live, objects should start glowing red from aerodynamic heating at just mach 3 (I know of an amateur rocket which reached mach 3 for just a second or two. The heat partially melted the plastic shroud for its onboard cameras).