GR translation: humped like a dolphin at around caliber 2

[Mike Jing]

Thanks, Monte.

On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 4:59 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l