Posted by Marc Martin on
URL: https://www.shado-forum.com/Conflict-episode-tp1490213p1490214.html

Ron writes:
>I was just watching the episode Conflict and was wondering if the references
>to reentry angle are bloopers.

That flight path angle gauge has always had me stumped. There are 4
quadrants, each labeled from 0 to 9. It doesn't really make any
sense to me *what* they're trying to measure. The numbers on the
gauge do correspond with the angles that they state verbally in the
episode, but you're right -- those angles don't correspond to
anything I know of in "the real world". In the aerospace industry,
a flight path angle of zero degrees means that you're flying
horizontally, with 90 degrees being straight up and -90 straight
down. In UFO, it seems that horizontal corresponds to 9 degrees,
while flying straight down corresponds to 0 degrees. When the first
lunar shuttle is destroyed, they're coming in too steep at 3 degrees,
and Foster barely survives at a slightly less steep angle of 4
degrees, while the correct angle seems to be 6, and Foster's "too
shallow" angle is 8 degrees. It's certainly not consistent with
anything that I know in the real world, but I'd hesitate to call it a
"blooper"... just something unique to the world of "UFO"... :-)

(especially since the episode is self-consistent throughout)

Also, that phrase "bounce off the Earth's atmosphere" left me
wondering for years if such a thing was really possible... and to
those of you *still* wondering, no, you really cannot "bounce" off
the Earth's atmosphere. You *can* stay in orbit and fail to reenter,
but there's no "bouncing"!

--
Marc Martin, [hidden email]