Watching the show coming live from the ISS, and the footage about rocket launches.
If you were stood underneath the engines when they lit up, would you be vapourised by the temperature first or hammered flat by the pressure wave?

I’d have thought you’d get ripped to pieces, some bits vapourised but other chunks blown sideways out of the exhaust.

Unless of course you’ve got some kind of subterranean volcanic tunnel you can use to get away, which is what I’d do anyway.

The Secret Service snipers will take you out first

Seriously, though: I suspect the pressure wave would get you first, although the timing difference is fractions of a second.

I have strange thoughts about these things!

Either way, I suspect you would be able to be buried in a matchbox from what they could find afterwards!

If it’s a liquid fuelled rocket I think you’d probably be frozen to death before you then get burnt to a crisp (the rocket motors vent liquid oxygen before they start).

Perhaps drowned by the water curtain that begins before ignition to deaden hazardous harmonic shock wave resonances?

or maybe eaten by ants ?

I think you’d poo your own brain out first.

Perhaps drowned by the water curtain that begins before ignition to deaden hazardous harmonic shock wave resonances?

This, probably, then your pressure-cooked corpse will be blown in little fragments out of the vents around the launch pad.

You’d be fine as long as you were on your single speed fat bike.

You would definitely need to take a couple of paracetamol and have a little lie down afterwards.

Last time I stood under a rocket engine I was left with an all over suntan, a slightly singed beard, and a mild ringing noise in the ears.

which rocket engine?

solid boosters are guaranteed to be toasty only.
liquid might be chilly, wet then toasty.

not entirely sure it would really matter, since the outcome would be much the same.

Interesting reading. Thanks.

Will spend the rest of the day avoiding rocket launch pads.

You wish to find out what it would be like?

That can be arranged…

frozen to a Popsicle by the liquid oxygen/hydrogen mix being pumped through engine prior to ignition.

Further reading for the interested: http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf

It’s an entertaining read about the development of rocket fuels.

[video]http://vimeo.com/4366695[/video]
Lightly browned on both sides, stick a fork in my ass, turn me over, I’m done. 😀

Count Zero – that is fascinating.

Great video.

Good book on the subject of the US Rocket Missions is: