You know how most meteors that enter earth's atmosphere burn up before they reach earth? The friction between the meteor and the atmosphere produces a great amount of heat. How is a space shuttle protected from friciton when it re-enters the earth's atmosphere?
2006-10-20 13:05:31 · 7 answers · asked by Andrea B 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
Meteors enter the atmosphere at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. They are not aerodynamic, so friction has a good time with them. They get hot and flame out.
On the Space Shuttle the bottom is covered with a heat resistant ceramic tile. It's very special and light weight. As the Shuttle enters the atmosphere it is tilted at a specific angle (nose up), to produce the most drag through the air. Not nose pointed forward but the flat bottom going first. This causes extreme heat to be generated and it looks like a meteor coming down. Because of the re-entry angle the Shuttle slows down a whole lot very quickly. The tiles on the bottom dissipate the heat instantly when the Shuttle slows and it all cools off. It's still hot as hell but cool relative to the re-entry temperature. One it's slowed enough, they tilt the nose down and glide to the landing strip.
The Shuttle typically orbits the Earth at about 25 times the speed of sound, MACH 25. Trying to fly anything through the atmosphere at the speed would be impossible. The re-entry process is designed to slow it down to a reasonable speed for flight in the air.
2006-10-20 13:19:46 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The description of the tiles above is very good. I would just add one fine point.
The tiles are specifically designed to be "ablative" meaning that they gradually vaporize to carry the heat away. It was one of the more clever ideas in the Shuttle program. Any gap in the tiles on re-entry would lead to a hot spot with the kind of disastrous consequences we've seen before.
Aloha
2006-10-20 13:33:34 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
They have protective tiles on the outer sheell and they enter the atmosphere at an angle that reduces the friction
2006-10-20 13:08:03 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
It all depends on properties of materials.space ship is protected with a layer of specific metale.on entering earth this metal heat up and after heating enormously it burns up leaving beneath protecting layer.this layer has very high heat capacitance and burns at ver high temp.if a metro consisting such material will enter in atmosphere it may reach on surface.
2006-10-20 19:16:31 · answer #4 · answered by Fawad 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋
you're spectacular. you may desire to have some thank you to regulate your velocity to be a similar via fact the floor velocity via rotation, till you are able to now land on the floor. yet that's actual of docking to something in area such via fact the worldwide area Station additionally. the floor velocity of the earth on the equator is approximately 1670 km/2nd. whilst a spacecraft is in low earth orbit (some hundred kilometers altitude), it completes an orbit in approximately ninety minutes, so that's unquestionably shifting lots swifter than the floor, which takes 24 hours to make one finished rotation. So whilst the holiday reenters earth's atmosphere that's shifting lots too quickly to land and it has to lose quite some that velocity. It makes use of air friction for many of the braking. we don't adventure winds of 1670 km/hr on the exterior even in spite of the undeniable fact that we are shifting at that velocity. the reason we don't is that the air gets dragged alongside with the floor, at with reference to a similar velocity. So the consequences of air resistance is going to be to help adventure your spacecraft's horizontal velocity to the floor velocity.
2016-11-24 20:27:23 · answer #5 · answered by acebedo 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Space Shuttle tiles are not ablative.
2006-10-21 10:03:22 · answer #6 · answered by Nomadd 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Special heat-insulating composites. Plus the angle of entry has to be just right to minimize the friction.
2006-10-20 13:08:36 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋