Space shuttie
However, if many tiles are missing the heat can do severe damage. The shuttle can lose an occasional tile and not incur much heat damage.
Space shuttie skin#
Without the tiles, the 3000 degree air touching the shuttle’s metal skin would melt through it. They conduct heat very poorly and thus keep heat from penetrating to the metal skin of the shuttle.
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On the underside are incredibly heat resistant, insulating silica tiles. The shuttle enters or "attacks" the atmosphere at such an angle that its nose and underside contacts and compresses the air and absorbs most of the heat generated. Thus, the shuttle needs a layer of insulation. Normally, this high temperature will melt almost any material- from the rock of a meteor to the metal skin of a space shuttle. The compression of the air layers near the leading edges of the shuttle is quick, causing the temperature of the air to rise to as high as 3000 degrees Fahrenheit! Being in contact with the shuttle, it heats the shuttle’s surface. As the shuttle gets lower, it eventually begins to plow through the Earth’s atmosphere at initial speed of about 17,000 miles per hour! During re-entry, the shuttle is going so fast, it compresses the air ahead of it. The astronauts slow down by firing some thrusters and gravity begins to pull the shuttle to a lower orbit. Initially, the shuttle moves around Earth in the emptiness of space at a tremendous speed. Now consider the re-entry of the space shuttle or the fall of a meteor through our atmosphere. When air (or any gas, for that matter) is compressed it heats up conversely when it expands it cools. That heat comes primarily from the action of your muscles pushing on a plunger and compressing the air in the pump. Perhaps you have noticed when you use a bicycle pump that the fitting at the end of the pump gets very hot, very quickly.
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There are actually two different phenomena at work to heat the shuttle, compressive heating and friction. Re-entry is a particularly dangerous time for the shuttle, a time during which the shuttle experiences tremendous stress and high temperatures. Teams of NASA investigators still are not sure what caused the shuttle to disintegrate in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The heroic deaths of the space shuttle Columbia’s seven astronauts raised many questions about the safety of the shuttle program. What generates all the heat during re-entry when the space shuttle returns to Earth? March 2003 Vocatio Center for Life Calling and Career.Office of Student Leadership & Engagement.