Canadian pilot - what was he thinking?

[Gibbon]

Previous post was a quote from Nasa site.

[TimberWolf]

What do they know?

Well they did manage to land something with a glide ratio of 2, unpowered. Although it does help somewhat when you're entering the atmosphere at a high rate of knots to start with. Try landing that without any initial (cheating) forward speed.

[SupremeSpod]

I find it rather interesting that the Shuttle (landing unpowered) and the Widowmaker (landing with engine thrust) had roughly the same landing speed. (216mph vs 207mph).

The main difference between the Shuttle and the Widowmaker is that the Shuttle is also a "lifting body" and the Widowmaker is a stubby-winged deathtrap.

[SupremeSpod]

I wonder who dreamed up the downwards ejector seat

Though it wasn't unique to that piece of flying tulipe.

The U2 is a Widowmaker with longer wings.

True, at altitude it is flying right on the edge of a stall.

That said, without some nifty balancing, flying Concorde would be "a bit tricky".