BTD10: The 835kph Sailplane and Dynamic Soaring

Here's a really wonderful talk by Spencer Lisenby about the basic physics and Lisenby's work on pushing the speed ▶ this video Some other interesting HN comments: link link

Adding to that, here's slope soaring, which is really cool. I haven't really done a lot of this due to having to travel far to have access to this type of geography. Beautiful silent flight, no motors required. They do add motors to some of the planes just so you have backup in case you lose lift. Here's an excellent intro to the sport: link And then there's the absolutely crazy/demented --in a good way-- dynamic slope soaring. I have yet to experience this. This is the domain of sophisticated carbon fiber and top-quality components. You can find videos of planes exploding in flight due to loads. This is a long video with a detailed technical explanation of dynamic soaring: ▶ this video 548 mph (882 kph) run: link

Similar dynamic slope soaring has been researched and demonstrated to dramatic affect by Spencer Lisenby and others: ▶ this video . In the video I linked he describes how they engineered and flew a RC glider at a speed of 519mph. Makes a lot of sense that this could be applied on a larger atmospheric scale for spacecraft.