Quote:
Originally Posted by bnmorgan
There is something similar called aerospike (not the rocket engine) that is used on some missile systems, which is a section of a sphere (dish?) on an extended pole at the nose of the craft.
presumably for the same concept of pre-punching the hole in the air with a smaller frontal area and then letting the bigger body fly through the expanding cone of cavitated air created.
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Something similar is done on the Russian K36 ejection seat to protect the pilot from extreme windblast during high speed ejections : a pole pops up at the front of the seat.
Those are all high speed appliances though.
Have a look at the Mach numbers for the light areas in the graph.
Even the ones in water are for - relatively - high speeds, as that's in a far thicker medium.