1
$\begingroup$

During Earth's atmospheric entry of an Apollo-like capsule, what would happen if oxygen hitting heatshield was mixed with fuel injected through heatshield, and ignited?

enter image description here

Edit & addendum : During hypersonic entry, is there a boundary layer, with velocity gradient, from 0 to hypersonic, close to heatshield's skin, where combustion may occur, and what about such a heatshield's shape behaviour? Would it act like a combustion chamber? (illustration below)

Ultimately, would this slow down entry by creating a bigger hypersonic draggy bubble around the capsule, some sort of entry burn, using no oxydizer.

enter image description here

|improve this question
$\endgroup$
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I guess you're wondering whether that would slow down the capsule or something? $\endgroup$ – DarkDust Dec 13 '18 at 16:54
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Ignition would not be necessary, the very high temperature will do it. Just remember how fuel is ignited within a diesel engine. But it would be a waste of precious mass transported together with the reentry capsule. $\endgroup$ – Uwe Dec 13 '18 at 16:55
  • $\begingroup$ @DarkDust exactly, Uwe nice point! $\endgroup$ – qq jkztd Dec 13 '18 at 17:27
  • $\begingroup$ effectively you'd have an ablative heatshield. Except the ablation generates heat, instead of carrying it away. $\endgroup$ – JCRM Dec 13 '18 at 17:31
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I think the mostly hypersonic airflow would be too fast for combustion to keep up? $\endgroup$ – geoffc Dec 13 '18 at 17:39
3
$\begingroup$

"Doctor, it hurts when I burn fuel in front of my heat shield!" "Don't do it then."

The procedure you're proposing wouldn't do anything useful, it'd just put a bit more load on to your heatshield (apart from being an engineering challenge to implement).

Your "combustion chamber" wouldn't generate any thrust, because that's not what combustion chambers do. They're just good at converting the chemical energy of the propellant into the internal energy of the resulting gas. And that's useless without a nozzle. You need a nozzle to take that internal energy (temperature and pressure; chaotic motion of particles bumping into each other) and convert it into a directed macroscopic flow that has a large total momentum, which in turn pushes the nozzle in the opposite direction.

So the burning propellant would just generate some extra heat before escaping away. Although it'd also push some of the hot gas away from the capsule, you can do that in a much more efficient way without combustion. This is exactly what ordinary ablative heat shields do: absorbing heat and converting it into a lot of gas that keeps the hot gases away from the capsule. The only difference is that ablative heatshields don't generate any extra heat, while your combustive heat shield would.

|improve this answer
$\endgroup$
  • $\begingroup$ saying combustion chamber i thought nozzle. bad wording of mine. $\endgroup$ – qq jkztd Dec 14 '18 at 20:58
  • $\begingroup$ by the way nice answer thank you even if comment section is not a place to say thank you $\endgroup$ – qq jkztd Dec 14 '18 at 21:04

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.