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by Tuna-Fish
846 days ago
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The point is that the shock isn't the air hitting the vanes, it's the air hitting other air. Similar to re-entry heating: the specific kinetic energy of the returning capsule is many times greater than would be required to melt and vaporize any material. So why do things survive re-entry? Because most of the energy is dissipated in the bow shock, significant distance away from from the capsule, where air gets heated to temperatures higher than the surface of the sun when other air slams into it. The purpose of the heatshield is to protect from radiative heating from the bow shock, not convective heating. Ablative heatshields do not work because ablation consumes energy which removes heat (again, there is sufficient energy going around to ablate the entire craft), but because they place a shade (made of ablated carbon particles) between the bow shock and the craft, which shields it from the radiative heating. |
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In this case the entry regime was such that convective heating far outweighed radiative heating.