Basic Information
Atmospheric Reentry is what happens when a spacecraft or satellite enters the atmosphere of a planet. It results in significant aerodynamic heating of the object and the air it passes through.
Reentry capable vehicles tend to have blunt or rounded body shapes, as this helps reduce the heat they experience. The air can't pass by them as quickly - instead of heating up via friction, the blunt shape creates an air cushion that insulates the craft. The temperature of the "shock layer" of heated air pushed ahead by the craft is subjected to (in Kelvins) is roughly equal to the speed it is traveling in meters per second. A spacecraft entering the atmosphere at 7.8 km/s would experience a peak shock layer temperature of 7800 K. That's pretty hot! By comparison, lava is liquid at temperatures of around 950 K to 1,500 K, and the surface of The Sun is only 5800 K. Luckily, this superheated air is quickly dissipated into the upper atmosphere.
The concept of the ablative heat shield was described as early as 1920 by Robert Goddard. Such heat shields often feature layers of materials that conduct heat poorly, sandwiched between layers of very hard materials.
In 2004, aircraft designer Burt Rutan demonstrated the feasibility of a shape changing airfoil for reentry with the suborbital SpaceShipOne. The wings on this craft rotate to provide a shuttlecock effect. Notably, SpaceShipOne does not experience significant thermal loads on reentry.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Any Orbital Shuttle, Atmospheric Probe, or Landing Module should feature a blunt nose with a heat shield, rotating wings, or both.
- Damage to the heat shield of a spacecraft could make landing disasterous. That's how the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster happened.
- If the players are foolish enough to try penetrating an atmosphere with a ship that lacks such features, it'll burn up with them in it.
- And don't try stowing away on the hull of a landing craft!
- One way to distinguish between the technologies of different space empires would be that one uses high-temp heat shields and flaming reentry, while the other uses a more graceful low-temp shuttlecock effect.
- And if you need to go a step beyond that (because of the trope Loads and Loads of Races being in effect, for example) there's forcefields, teleportation, and perhaps some sort of heatsink superscience.
- Damage to the heat shield of a spacecraft could make landing disasterous. That's how the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster happened.
- So the heat dissipates, eh? If that turns out to just be wishful thinking, it could be a contributing factor in global warming.
- Or for a crazy disaster movie feel, every reentry could have a chance of igniting the atmosphere and destroying the world!
