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Originally Posted by Royatl
This is the only one I've seen so far (attachment)
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Looking at that closeup picture makes me wonder what the acoustic lethality radius is for the Falcon 9. (That level of sound can easily kill anyone who's close enough, and it can even--through vibrational friction--burn the hair on furry animals, especially tiny ones like mice, who can't get away fast enough.) Martin Caidin (the flight surgeon, space writer, and science fiction author whose novel "Cyborg" became "The Six Million Dollar Man" on TV) had two close "sonic brushes" with rockets:
Before the last Titan I launch at the Cape, he and a young USAF fellow (an officer, if memory serves) hid in bushes 1,000 feet or less from the launch pad, in order to get a better view and to experience the sound more intensely. The launch was successful, but they both got far more than they'd bargained for, because--as he reported in one of his books--the sound generated an excruciating pain (he wrote that it felt like being continuously stabbed in both ears with ice picks!), and covering his ears with his hands made no difference. They both collapsed to the ground in agony, and they were soon caught by a security patrol as they tried to crawl away, being unable to walk after having their bodies "internally beaten" by the overwhelming sound, and:
The second incident occurred over Launch Complex 17 on a night with a low overcast, when he flew his light plane--with a reporter friend aboard--directly over the active pad (either 17A or 17B) just as a Thor-Delta rocket nearly hit his plane (or vice-versa...). He wrote that the roar--and a golden light illuminating the cloud layer--quickly became deafening and blinding, respectively, and that the airplane buzzed and rattled as if it might shake to pieces. Suddenly the rising rocket passed less than a hundred feet away, and for an instant it was plainly visible despite the murk, so bright was the glare. When they landed, his terrified passenger, and the seat he was sitting on, were soiled. (Caidin claimed that he was lost and accidentally flew over the launch pad, but the late Arthur P. Smith [curator of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium and head of the Southern Cross Astronomical Society], who was also a former Pan Am pilot and a friend of Caidin's, said, with a chuckle--when I related that incident to him--that Caidin was an excellent navigator and pilot, and that he *wasn't* lost that night... :-) )