Talk:3093: Drafting

The efficiency loss is presuamably because the exhaust from the lead rocket is pushing back on the following rocket. It's also really hot, so the follower may be destroyed. Barmar (talk) 15:27, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Anyone else getting lots of "site is experiencing difficulties" errors Barmar (talk) 15:28, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes. It must be drafting behind another, more powerful rocket-themed web page and was experiencing some of that "99% inefficiency." 172.68.26.136 15:56, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

" getting lots of "site is experiencing difficulties" errors " Yes. --PRR (talk) 16:22, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes. From the experience of another forum I'm in, it's probably a sudden uptick on (possibly AI-feeding?) site-scraping. On that site, the number of viewers suddenly increased from a few hundred people online, maximum, at any given time, to tens of thousands. The owner of the site put an additional "are you human" check in the way (after about a week of it), and it fell back to less than a hundred simultaneous connections (not that far off the actual observable user-traffic, with a couple of handfuls of Guest lurkers at any given time, rather than the pre-slowdown peaks of three or four times the provably genuine users).

That site didn't have Cloudflare, unlike here, and didn't use that as a solution. I would have hoped that this would have mitigated it here, though. Possibly, however, things could have already been hundreds of times worse without it as it is, hard to know for sure.

And though my reasoning of the cause is just a guess, I'm sure others have noticed that the amount of 503/Connection Issue responses we're getting has substantially reduced the spam-level numbers of "goes nowhere, does nothing" new accounts that this site tends to get (its other anti-spam protections having long since prevented most of those from doing anything, while still seemingly allowing genuine users to interact). Hard to fully qualify that as a positive, but I suspect that genuinely driven 'honest editors' are more likely to persevere and get past the current bottlenecks, so it might (in certain, rather limited, terms) improve the editing experience. (The other site started to be really hammered (to then prompt calls for its subsequent changes) on 11/May, which seems to me to coincide very closely with the drop in new spam-style account names on here, which seems to corroborate it being the same global issue causing both sites problems.)

Not that I wouldn't appreciate less of the 503s/etc. It definitely is a direct annoyance. Which I can't see being solved any time soon (if Cloudflare doesn't blanket add to its proxying protections, itself). 172.68.229.49 16:34, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Also here. Had to reload the page three times before I could begin writing. And will likely have to reload or try again several times before this is posted --Kynde (talk) 19:06, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Added notes on difference between friction and expellant propulsion 172.69.212.151 16:14, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Just a comment about drafting and cycle-sport. It might be used in peletons and certain velodrome events (i.e. not "pursuit" ones). But in my own part of the sport, time-trialling, it is actually not allowed (excepting in team time-trials), as competitors that have just been passed by a faster rider are not supposed to hang on (figuratively, of course) to their wheel. Nor should you try to catch your minute-man just so that you can stick behind them. Also, the rules on the amount of traffic allowed on the roads during an event, as well as being a direct safety aspect on the busiest of roads, are meant to remove any excessive advantage from passing traffic (especially lorries) pushing/pulling the competitors along. This doesn't mean that the occasional ride won't get some assistance. A fast tractor may be too slow for a fast rider to stay behind, who would really need to pass it when safe to do so, but could be going just fast enough for a slower one to benefit (but at the risk of being spotted doing so and the issue addressed appropriately). But competitor-on-competitor co-pacing (or accompanied riding of any other unofficial kind) is definitely a no-no. 172.68.229.49 16:34, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

This comic made me think of this video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yuMcAS_wRRQ 172.69.212.145 17:45, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

The exhaust of the lead rocket might increase the density of the gas around the following rocket, thus affecting the efficiency of the following rocket's engine. (Giving the effect of being at a lower altitude if in atmospheric flight.) Rockets generally are less efficient in higher density atmosphere, and are designed for a particular density. If the following rocket was close enough, it might alter the efficiency of the lead rocket by increasing density near the lead rockets engine, or by providing something similar to ground effect for the lead rocket. (The extent of such effects would also depend on any atmosphere.) 108.162.245.19 19:12, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Since rockets often travel at supersonic speeds, it seems like the costs and benefits of drafting might be altered, compared to land vehicles drafting at subsonic speeds. (Would both rockets have shock waves in front, would the shockwave from the trailing rocket interact with the first rocket, ...) Seems like it would be worth mentioning, but I couldn't find much about supersonic slipstreaming. Since I am not a rocket scientist, I wouldn't hazard a guess what might happen. 162.158.41.115 19:35, 23 May 2025 (UTC)