[BryanLegend]

The gasses get so hot they give off a lot of black body radiation. Heat shield is mostly beat up with infrared.

When the gases decompress they'll be a lot cooler, just like your AC.

[pfdietz]

I believe for entry from LEO, and particularly for small RVs like this one, convective heating is orders of magnitude higher than radiative heating.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140012475/downloads/20... (see slide 7)

[BryanLegend]

From Slide 7: "Radiation dominates convection at ~11.5km/s for 1m radius • Radiation dominates convection at ~10km/s for 5m radius"

[pfdietz]

Since this is reentering from LEO, it's maybe 8km/s (and dropping). And the radius of curvature on the nose of that shield was maybe 20 cm?