GR translation: humped like a dolphin at around caliber 2

[Monte Davis]

This is tough and I'm not confident, but it seems to be a layering of (1)
the physical/visual profile of the rocket -- actually its scale model in
the wind tunnel -- and (2) a graph of aerodynamic pressure ("net normal
force") at each point along the rocket's or model's length.

IOW, imagine that in this image
http://up-ship.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/x-15.jpg

the varying density of the air were expressed not in darker and lighter
tones showing shock waves,  but as the varying height of a graph line from
nose to tail. That line would be a "warped and travestied" version of the
model's profile, bulging up like the forehead of a dolphin where pressure
increases and necking down like a bullet casing where it decreases. In the
same way, a parabola -- gravity's rainbow -- can be both the spatial path
of a projectile and a graphed function of velocity or other quantities.

That said... I don't recall seeing ":caliber" (canonically the diameter of
a cylindrical bullet) used anywhere else in the book's A4-sprache as a
place or position. P does use the more conventional "station" at least
once. All I can guess is that here he wants to evoke that Rocket/bullet
duality that appeared in Slothrop's mind almost as soon as the first A4
appeared in London: it's aimed at you personally, the One With Your Name On
It.:



On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 1:44 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> V422.35-423.4, P429.34-430.2   . . . watched run after run the
> Halbmodelle results out of the wind tunnel, showing how the net normal
> force would be distributed over the Rocket’s length, for hundreds of
> different Mach numbers—seen the true profile of the Rocket warped and
> travestied, a rocket of wax, humped like a dolphin at around caliber
> 2, necking down toward the tail which was then stretched up,
> impossibly, in a high point with a lower shoulder aft of it—and seen
> how his own face might be plotted, not in light but in net forces
> acting upon it from the flow of Reich and coercion and love it moved
> through . . . and known that it must suffer the same degradation, as
> death will warp face to skull . . . .
>
> What does "caliber 2" refer to here?
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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