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Re: My God, you are an idiot.
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Originally Posted by Sidd Finch
Um.... any object that follows a ballistic trajectory goes up as fast as it comes down.
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I do not think this is true. The missile has to overcome gravity on the way up. The opposite is true on the way down. After lift-off, a rocket may move rather slowly, relative to the speed it will have just before it lands.
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The issue isn't whether it's going up or down, it's how high it goes -- the missile is going to be slower as it closer to top of its trajectory, regardless of whether it is going up or down. With an ICBM, that point is very very high about the Earth. With a Scud, it presumably isn't, so maybe good radar plus good planes plus good missiles enables it to be shot down.
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I am unreliably informed that a SCUD's maximum altitude is ~200 km, far above the operating altitude of warplanes.
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