Questions tagged [heat-shield]
Questions about technologies used to protect reentering space craft from the heat of friction from the atmosphere. May also refer to technologies used to block heat from solar radiation while in the vacuum of space.
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Will there be a flame around the capsule from Stoke Space Technologies during reentery?
Stoke Space Technologies (https://www.stokespace.com/) will send fuel through the heat shield of its capsule to keep it from heating up. They actually mentioned that they are more concerned that the ...
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Does an inflatable heat shield have some capacity to be used for LEO Earth's atmospheric entry?
It was originally designed and tested by NASA for Mars missions.
In my case, it does not have to work 100%. Even if it survives for only 1 minute or so, during atmospheric entry - it could add some ...
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Why are cone shaped heat shields used for Mars entry?
Heat shields used for Earth reentry are usually curved but heat shields used for Mars’ entry are coned shaped. Why is this?
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Can something like SpinLaunch actually work?
Can something like SpinLaunch actually work?
It appears that Spinlaunch attempts to accelerate a capsule to very high speeds and then basically throw it into space.
A regular rocket is moving slowest ...
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Heatshield during re-entry of space vehicles
All the CMs for Apollo, as well as the space shuttles, basically used "Blunt body" technique for re-entry. While Apollo CMs used "ablative" type of heatshield, the space shuttles ...
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Could sheets of stacked graphene be used as part of a heat shield, since its melting point is 3000k to 5000 K
Since graphene material is the strongest manmade material, with "magical" properties, I wonder if it could be considered for use as a heat shield, since its melting point is 3000 to 5000 K ...
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Has anyone explored using sound as a heat shield?
I edited original post to better reflect question. I was looking around to see if anyone had explored the idea of using (Ultrasonic or Hypersonic)sound to deflect heat from a ship. Specifically sound ...
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What is the heat shield refurbishment procedure for a crew Dragon capsule?
How, specifically, is the heat shield replaced or refurbished? More precisely... How do they know it will work for the next mission? :-P
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Post-flight analysis of SpaceX Starship 20 heat shield tiles
If Starship 20 will not be recovered, how will SpaceX evaluate the performance of the heat tiles? If a couple of heat tiles fall off and the Starship bursts into flames, how can SpaceX figure out ...
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Merging Shuttle and External Tank to reduce reentry heating
The Space Shuttle needed a high-performance heat shield that caused much grief over it's operational life. Having a large surface area on a reentering vehicle reduces temperatures by causing the ...
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Do aeroshells need to be super smooth to survive atmospheric entry?
IIRC, one of the arguments against Shuttle Columbia's hole being repaired was that the repair would not be smooth. Apparently, the heat shielding relied on a sensitive boundary layer. Even a small ...
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Would it have made a difference to the TPS design if the Shuttle used skip reentries?
The Space Shuttle needed silica tiles and carbon-carbon panels to survive the sustained high temperatures of reentry. These materials were fragile and high-maintenance, and this led to the Columbia ...
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If a Space Shuttle tile deorbited on its own, what percentage of it's mass if any would remain in one piece until it reached the surface of the earth?
If a Space Shuttle tile deorbited on its own, what percentage of it's mass if any would still be in one piece if and when it reached the surface of the earth?
The question was inspired by one of the ...
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Ablative heat shield and conservation of energy, how much does ablated matter in fact "carry away" versus re-radiate the absorbed heat?
I saw
Most heat shields ablate, that is they sacrifice material to carry heat away...
in a comment under this answer and started writing:
I think that shields ablate to produce a layer of complex ...
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How many different hexagonal tiles' modules are required to pave one Starship?
Assuming SpaceX would like to avoid absolute unmodularity of STS' thermal protection system, which was composed of (symmetry aside) mostly different and unique tiles. What tiling typologic strategies ...
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Has there ever been an attempt or serious consideration for spacecraft to land on Mars without an ablative-type heat shield?
My answer to Do exploration spacecraft enter Mars atmosphere against Mars rotation, or on the same direction? lauds the use of ablative heat shields for minimizing radiative heating of a spacecraft by ...
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Is Perseverance's heat shield's thickness radially symmetric?
I came across this video1 about the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission, especially the atmospheric entry phase.
It says between about 03:50 and ...
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What were the Shuttle TPS repair patches made of?
Following the incident on STS-107, three methods of dealing with damaged tiles were developed.
The method for large tile damage involved screwing a very thin plate over the hole, after loosely filling ...
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How did they get away with sticking tiles with spit for so long?
The STS Orbiter was infamous for losing tiles. This occurred at a higher rate than expected.
I understand the epoxy used to attach the tiles to the shuttle cured extremely quicky, so a fresh batch ...
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How large can heatshield holes be?
The tiles on the underside of the STS Orbiter had gaps between them to allow for the frame underneath to shift slightly. However, if the gaps were too large fillers were used.
What controls the ...
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How is PICA different from other heat shielding materials?
What are the differences and why did SpaceX prefer to use PICA?
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Mercury reentry heat shields; material composition, manufacturing process and explanation of all those concentric ridges?
A collection of photos in posts by Miles Lumbard there is a page titled Mercury Retro Pack Walk Around Page 1 (spotted here in reference to the thermal zebra stripes) can be found nine images with the ...
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Why did Columbia disintegrate lower into the atmosphere, not during its peak heat phase?
Space Shuttle Columbia entered a period of peak heating at 46 mi (74 km) altitude. Before the contact got broken, the temperature on Columbia's wing leading-edges had sunk already (and the heat shield ...
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Testing of rocket heat shield on Earth
One Space Shuttle was destroyed due to failure of the insulation tiles. SpaceX is reportedly using another technology, which replicates sweating , for wearing off the reentry heat. How is the ...
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Do aeroshells really get hotter than the surface of the sun?
This answer to How to design heatshield bluntness? says:
Curiosity reentry dumped about 98% of its entry energy into the atmosphere, the aeroshell can still get to be temps greater than the surface ...
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Number of segment in Wing leading Edges
Can anyone highlight the basis of having 22 NO’s of segment in wing leading edges of space shuttle.
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How to design heatshield bluntness?
How is the bluntness or curvature of a heat shield of a reentry spacecraft designed?
If the answer depends on size and mass, consider a deep space sample return "mini capsule" 50 cm in ...
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Why do you need a heat shield on Mars entry if the atmosphere is so thin?
Mars' atmosphere is only .088 psi. Is that enough to cause heat at high altitude? Shouldn't you be able to fly close to the surface at orbital speeds like on the moon? How does a parachute work with ...
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Are heat shields just as necessary on launch as re-entry?
I always hear about heat shields in the context of spacecraft re-entry to the atmosphere. However, in order to reach escape velocity, aren't the same speeds and atmospheric resistances at play during ...
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Which theory does this reentry heating rate equation come from?
The paper by Wang et al. at Scitech 2018 uses the following constraint on the rocket heating rate (equation (3) in the paper):
$$k_Q \sqrt{\rho} V^{3.15} \le \dot{Q}_{max}$$
(screen shot)
I am ...
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What are the most promising re-usable heat shield designs for atmospheric re-entry?
I've noticed that most re-usable heat shield designs are not developed enough to be useful in the near future. The re-usable shields I've seen used in the past all use the "thermal soak" method, which ...
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Capsule heat shielding made of Aerogel?
I was reading about crew capsules and the reentering into earths atmosphere.
Since this generates loads of heat that the crew and capsule needs to be protected from heat shielding is used. I read this ...
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Heat shield on Venus
On Venus, the conditions are really extreme in terms of heat and pressure.
Say we take many layers of rockets' lab heat shield for Electron (which I am not sure what is made of). Could it provide heat ...
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How much is a typical reentry vehicle decelerated by heatshield ablation?
Most spacecraft (or parts thereof) intended to survive atmospheric (re-)entry use an ablative heatshield, which, when exposed to the strong aerodynamic heating of (re-)entry, gradually ablates away, ...
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Who was the first to successfully implement on practice ablative heat shield?
Up until Shuttle/Buran era, all manned orbital reentry vehicles used ablative heat shield for reentry (Vostok, Mercury, Voskhod, Gemini, Soyuz, Apollo).
This made me curious about who was the first in ...
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What was the operational lifetime of a shuttle tile?
The statement "While some of the individual tiles on the shuttle might last 10 missions" from this excellent answer has led a questioner to make the statement "someone here at Space Stack-Exchange ...
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Shuttle silica ceramics black tiles
Since other members wrote, that my my original question here Shuttle silica ceramics black tiles? was too broad I modified it to asked just one thing, while the other questions I will asked later.
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Why is the Heat Shield of ESA's Solar Orbiter Black in colour?
Solar Orbiter (SolO) is a planned Sun-observing satellite, under development by the European Space Agency (ESA). Due to its proximity to the Sun, it receives about 13 times more solar energy than we ...
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What might the description "tiny glass vermicelli at a microstructure level" refer to? (SpaceX Starship heat shield tiles)
In the Starship Update at about 21:05 Musk says:
We’ve gone through various iterations of heat shield, there’s a lot of ways to skin a cat here. Ultimately we ...
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Why aren't RCS openings an issue for spacecraft heat shields?
A spacecraft which needs to both maneuver and enter the atmosphere needs both a reaction control system and a thermal protection system (aka heat shield). As the heat shield needs to be on the outer ...
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Expansive ablative heat shield
Are there studies about using expansive foam such as polyurethane, so that it provides high volume & high cross section heatshielding, instead of inflatable ones, or in combination with inflatable ...
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What kind of heat shield will Federatsiya (Federation) have?
Federatsiya (or Federation) is Russia's next generation crew vehicle, to replace Soyuz. According to its Wikipedia article, it may be reusable:
Roskosmos reserved the option of making the crew ...
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Did the heat shield of the Vostok 1 capsule ablate during reentry?
This Wikipedia article (in german) has some information about the heat shield of Vostok 1.
The heat shield was made from asbestos, its thickness was increased from 3 cm to up to 18 cm. The weight of ...
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Where are the Apollo forward heat shields currently located?
The Apollo Experience Report: Thermal Protection Subsystem explains that there are three sections to the Apollo heat shield:
The aft heat shield, at the "base" of the cone and adjacent to the SM. ...
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What is the point in which metal turns white hot during launch or reentry called?
This is a slow motion film of the Sprint missle. There is a point where to skin goes white hot like a light switch. What is that called?
What metal gets white hot while keeping its shape?
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Maximum speed based on atmospheric altitude given maximum temp?
I saw the question Could escape velocity be achieved in the atmosphere? and thought it probably could've been asked better.
I'm sure there's an equation to calculate the average heat generated by an ...
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What happened to Starlite? [closed]
I was talking to a person (lets say his name is Tim) that when Tim was a child he remembered in a grade school demonstration on this Starlite material (Starlite is a material claimed to be able to ...
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Why not increase contact surface when reentering the atmosphere?
If a craft were to increase the surface area where contact is made with air during reentry, I imagine the heat quantity per area unit would decrease, making the use of (heavy) heat shields less of a ...
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Has SpaceX been communicating with the German SHEFEX program about their actively cooled heat shield tests?
The German SHarp Edge Flight EXperiment has used some sounding rockets to test aerodynamic control surfaces during hypersonic reentry. The nose consists of thin ceramic plates bolted to aluminum with ...
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Active liquid cooling for heat shield
I have not found much about active liquid cooling for heat shields using cryogenic fuel. It has been mentioned but not researched in depth. It may never have been done. Now that the Starship seems to ...
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