Originally Posted by
Sue Vêtements
They'd be dragging a balloon AND a parachute, with the cable sawing away at the leading edge . . .
I don't believe that at M0.8 anything would be dragging. Anything made of fabric material would be shredded and ripped from whatever it was attached to.
With apologies, adding a bit of gruesome detail to prove the point, clothes are simply torn off bodies when exposed to such airflows during high-speed aircraft break-ups.
The lightweight line (or 'string') between each component of the balloon system would simply be snapped if it were to be struck by the wing at cruising speed. Each component of the balloon system has mass, and therefore inertia, being stationary relative to the aircraft, putting immense loads on any bit of 'string' attempting to accelerate it almost supersonic by the passing wing in around 1 millisecond.