How Fast Before an Engine Can Swallow a Person?
Daniel wrote in asking a grisly question: how fast does a jet engine have to be spinning before a person on the ramp becomes something it can swallow? The answer turns out to be barely above idle — and the reason why reframes the whole hazard. It isn't engine RPM that kills, it's mass flow, and a large turbofan at ground idle is already pulling hundreds of kilograms of air per second through a ring you could stand in. We unpack the physics behind the little stick-figure diagram on the cowling: the capture streamtube, why "sucked in" is the wrong mental model, why the slow regime produces…
The skinny
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