Fastest Missile ever!

[Fallybear]

From the looks of the rocket as it hits the ground, I'd guess it's 2-3 feet long.  Is this something that's big enough to be tracked by radar?  Especially since this rocket isn't rolling like projectile ordinance.

Our Radar was a surface search fire control radar. Able to track while scan, state of the art 30 years ago. If they have a radar that was countinous wave and fixed beam then yes they would have the resolution to track it all the way in.

I think you just gave out Top Secret information to the Chinese!

[Writers_Strike]

The simplest answer is usually the best (yakim) and here Regina may simply have known how far away was the island and that's what she's reporting.  The missile had a defined burn time, ballistics, and therefore is time to landing was anticipated not tracked.

I agree due to the fact that he called it a beacon. But lets not get off track with the origional post, the boat can no longer be 80 miles away.

[SQUIRT199]

I have to watch the episode again, unless someone else knows for sure...did she say it was down, do we know she saw it go down, like on a radar...or is she just estimating it went down from her shooting blindly to an area, the equipment Daniel had...once again we have too many variables to be sure....

Yeah, I was wondering something similar.

- Did Regina say the missile landed at its target because she was following it from radar?
Most likely.

- Was Daniel indeed synchronizing the missile clock with the island clock, or was he doing something else?
Synchronizing. What else could he have been doing? Downloading images of Evangeline Lilly from his home computer 'cause he noticed Kate looked just like her?

- Exactly how much time passed between when Regina said the missile landed, and when it finally did land?
31 minutes - 28 seconds = ~ 30.5 minutes.  From Dan's perspective.

- Is the 31 minute difference between the two clocks meant to indicate how long it took the missile to land, or something else?
The time discrepancy of this object as it either traversed the length of space-time bubble encompassing the island, or the effect of crossing whatever barrier exists between the island & the outside world.

For more kicks, try this:

http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/EINSTEIN/Chapter9.html

Then you can understand the show!

Is it a clock that dan has or a timer,

did it take 31 minutes or 2hrs 45mins to arrive from the ship?

[casino]

I'm pretty sure with speeds like that the rocket would have burned up from the friction, not to mention be destroyed by the impact and causing a large crater.

Anyone else wonder why they decided to launch a supersonic missile to land 20 meters away from to only functioning way off the island. Seems really stupid.

I did!  Seems pretty risky, especially since Faraday was wandering around in circles the whole time looking for it.

[casino]

I spent six years in the Navy studying missiles. I have a decent grasp on how they travel and how fast.

What exactly are you getting at?

Wiki the RIM-7 (sea sparrow).  Your numbers don't match what the navy says about their rocket.

I'm with Goober.  Working backwards from the 28 seconds, I think 2 miles out for a rocket and 12 miles or so for something like a Sidewinder travelling Mach 2+ is about right.

[goober]

Maximum distance from the island would be 40 miles. Which is doable. I have been operating under the assumption that a "freighter" would not be equipped with a military missile system. Hence the slower speed estimate. However, considering what they DO have, I'm not so sure that they don't have something like a RIM launcher. So a Mach 2-3 missile is not so out of the question, as I had first thought.

[Writers_Strike]

During the recap episode the pop up said the freighter was 80 nautical miles away when the rocket was fired. This puts the speeds at MACH 15 for a 28-30 sec time of flight.

[Lion of Atreides]

Too many discrepancies!
  1) I'd calculated a freighter distance of 35 miles back on pg.2 of this thread. Yet the popup said 80 miles.
  2) The missile came from the opposite direction that Dan had expected
  3) Simultaneity in effect? I.e. 28 sec vs 31 minutes. Two plane crashes.
  4) The chopper's misadventures, which we'll see next week

Me, I'm gonna let this mangy mystery lie.  Hopefully we get some more data next week, and can re-evaluate.  Until then, any further rumination will surely cause an aneurysm.

[Writers_Strike]

So if a ship were 80 miles away from an island doing circles around the island, How long would it take to reach the other side??

If my guess is right and they talk through time, the missile was fired from 31 minutes in the future. So the boat would not have been on the side you would expect. Not to mention they are in the middle of the island and may not be sure of the boats direction.

[Creflo]

The popup said 80km which is only 49mph.

...or kill me.

[Writers_Strike]

Popup said 80 nautical miles, which is 92 miles-Distance

You are thinking of Kilometers per hour Vs Miles per hour-Speed

[LostAndSeek]

We don't know that the popups are in canon, do we? Are they written by the Powers or are they subcontracted out?

Even if they are in canon, the 80 whichever may just be referring to Naomi's claim that that's how far away the freighter was when she helicoptered in. We now know Naomi was not exactly truthful and, as several folks have pointed out, the boat may have moved since.

[goober]

Can't be more than 40... Mach 3.5 gives it a maximum distance of 40 miles. No missile that I know of exceeds Mach 4.2.

[Lion of Atreides]

You know, this 'not canon' line is very devious of TPTB.  They get a chunk of the profits from an extra hour of prime time commercials.  It's their show, their story.  But they sub-contract out the popups, the ARGs, the Mobisodes?, media like the Orchid Video?. Then later can either run with a good idea, or disregard it.

The everyday viewer watches the popups and learns stuff that totally went over the head the first time.  Which the rabid fans picked apart and figured out in venues such as SWLS over the prior week. But it's the discrepancies, like '80 miles offshore', which the average viewer hears and go 'eh.', but which causes fits for us.  Grrrr.....