On the fighter
Contrails from the docs' fighter at cruise, on a day you set.
contrails.tsx
Starting…
The fighter cruises at Mach 0.85, and its trails are laid in the air it has flown through: twenty seconds of them, five kilometres. Nothing about them is drawn to a shape or a timer.
- The gap behind the nozzles is the 0.14 s the exhaust takes to cool enough by mixing to pass water saturation: 36 m at this speed.
- Two trails become one as the vortices off each wingtip draw them in and the pair sinks with the wake, some 90 m before the vortices link up and break, half a minute behind.
- They thin as they widen: the same ice spread over more air.
- Pull the humidity under 100 % over ice and the trails evaporate a few seconds behind the aircraft. Over it, they persist.
- Lower the altitude and the air warms past the threshold: at 10 km on a standard day, the fighter trails nothing.
- Switch to hydrogen and the trails form further behind, in warmer air, and are fainter: fewer, larger crystals.
- Light the burner and the trails thicken: full reheat burns six times the fuel, and lays six times its water. Less of the heat pushes, so they form 47 m behind, in air a degree colder.
- Turn and the trails curve behind the aircraft along the path it flew. At 2 g the wake is twice as strong and sinks twice as fast, and links up in half the time.
The line under the controls says what the physics made of the day.