Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by functional_dev 77 days ago
your point about gas pockets making the shield blow out made me curious

I found this visual schematic of the spalling helpful - https://vectree.io/c/the-physics-of-ablative-spalling-in-ori...

It finally makes sense why the gas needs to leak out... if it gets trapped behind the burnt outer crust, the pressure just blows pieces of the shield off like a tiny bomb