Guy on a Missile: What effect on the missile?

[Darren_Garrison]

Do smaller things like this count as missiles, or should it be called a rocket?

TRUE LIES - YOU'RE FIRED - CLASSIC

[Machine_Elf]

Generally speaking, if it’s got a guidance/steering system of some sort, it’s a missile; if there’s no guidance/steering, it’s a rocket.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@Machine_Elf

A fighter jet can take off while fitted with a massive quantity of external stores and can jettison all of those stores in flight, and maintain controlled flight under all of these conditions. Having Tony Stark clinging to one of your hardpoints might make a noticeable difference, but it seems unlikely to cause any sort of aviation emergency.

The aerodynamic effects of those “external stores” are accounted for in flight controllability and drag, and of course both missiles and weapon/instrument/fuel pods are conformally shaped to minimize drag. A guy in a powered suit hanging off of a hardpoint is definitely going to affect stability and drag performance, although probably not enough to cause a large fighter jet to become uncontrollable at cruising speeds.

The bigger question is what Iron Man was hanging onto on the belly of the aircraft; the F-22 is a largely composite airframe and all of the external skin is a carbon fiber/bismaleimide resin composite system that can bear the compressive and shear aeroloads but is actually fairly delicate in interlaminar tension, so if he was somehow adhesively or electrostatically ‘clutching’ the outer layer of the skin, he’d basically rip that off and likely cause a cascading structural failure as successive layers disbonded from one another. Or, if he dug the suit’s gauntlets in between panels he’s probably going to overstress those and tear them out.

@Machine_Elf

Generally speaking, if it’s got a guidance/steering system of some sort, it’s a missile; if there’s no guidance/steering, it’s a rocket.

This is the general convention with ‘tactical’ weapons but with larger craft that isn’t true. All non-airbreathing propulsion systems are based upon the rocket principle (internal heating of propellants under pressure that are then expelled from a nozzle for momentum transfer), but ‘missiles’ means they are weapons or weapon-carriers, and rockets are non-weapon vehicles used for experiments, targets, or space launch vehicles.

Stranger

[gnoitall]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

and rockets are non-weapon vehicles used for experiments, targets, or space launch vehicles.

In the US military nomenclature system, @Machine_Elf’s distinction is the literal technical truth.

United States Department of Defense aerospace vehicle designation | Vehicle type symbol

M - Guided Missile. Guided missiles are unmanned vehicles flying a path controlled by a guidance system.

R - Rocket. Rockets are single-use unmanned vehicles without guidance after launch.

At least in the context of US Air Force and Navy weapon systems, the distinction is guidance.

Most aircraft rocket-propelled weapons are guided but within living history the USAF had a major weapon system which was unguided: the AIR-2 Genie. (Which really didn’t need guidance, because “close” is good enough when you’re packing a 1.5 kiloton warhead.)

AIR-2 Genie

Of course, the distinction is only in the context of this specific nomenclature system, so the broader use of missile (weapon system) versus rocket (non-weapon system) may be more appropriate for this discussion.

[Dissonance]

@Machine_Elf

Generally speaking, if it’s got a guidance/steering system of some sort, it’s a missile; if there’s no guidance/steering, it’s a rocket.

As an aside, that’s the Western/US distinction. Everything is a rocket in Soviet/Russian/Chinese parlance, from a Katusha to an ATGM up to an ICBM. See Strategic Rocket Forces (USSR/Russia) and People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (China), while the USAF operates strategic missile wings.