I’m pretty sure it turns you to jello.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430914

Kills you via internal liquefaction

Brand name Jello.

When Ed Lu took me to the Shuttle launch his GF (wife?) said she was at one of the Soyuz launches and she said they were ridiculously close (compared to 3m at the Cape).

She said they were huddled behind a pickup with rocks and dirt flying all over the place.

My kind of fun!

Was out there as well. Not planning a re-entry, not a lot of effort put into tiles.

Was out there as well. Not planning a re-entry, not a lot of effort put into tiles.

Technically yes, but probability was low. Heat shield wasn't the primary objective.

Technically yes, but probability was low. Heat shield wasn't the primary objective.

Somewhere out in the X/twitter verse I found someone wrong on the internet. :-)

They were ragging on Spacex about what an embarrassing failure this was...

My response:
You can do iterative development where you EXPECT and plan for failure, but improve on each attempt.

You can do development where you don't expect any failures and spend an immense time doing analysis and sub system test.

Reality!=Simulation. You will always progress faster when you are allowed to fail and reality teaches you what you did not know. This IFT-2 flight was a big step up from
IFT-1.

The first 3 falcon 1 flights failed. There were many many voices of how stupid can they be. Today Spacex is on track to launch 100 missions this year.

Blue Origin was founded 2 years before Spacex.
They have taken the no failures analysis approach to development. They have yet to fly an orbital rocket.
And even when they do eventually fly the expendable New Glen (yeah I know 1st stage is reusable) they will have achieved the the same level of success that Spacex achieved in 2016.

When starship has evolved to be reliable and reusable New Glen will be 100% irrelevant. A many many billion dollar failure and misapplication of resources.

Maybe not, but it is going to be incredibly difficult and will could be the most difficult issue in the program.

The tiles have to be light weight, absorb the heat of reentry, take the vibration of launch, take the low pressure of max Q, and adhere to a cryogenically cold steel surface that expands and contracts with changes in tank pressure and temperature.

Mechanical methods break the thermal barrier, adhesive methods are challenging in the cold and to withstand the expansion and contraction factors.

This is not going to be easy.

Mike C.

Maybe not, but it is going to be incredibly difficult and will could be the most difficult issue in the program.

The tiles have to be light weight, absorb the heat of reentry, take the vibration of launch, take the low pressure of max Q, and adhere to a cryogenically cold steel surface that expands and contracts with changes in tank pressure and temperature.

Mechanical methods break the thermal barrier, adhesive methods are challenging in the cold and to withstand the expansion and contraction factors.

This is not going to be easy.

Mike C.

For an orbital reentry heat shield I really like what Stoke space is doing.

NASA looked at actively cooled heat shields back in the 70s (?), usually using liquid hydrogen which has the highest heat capacity per mass. I think its tricky. The power per area is very high. if you have good thermal conductivity from the surface to the LH2, its a tremendous amount of energy to dissipate. OTOH if you insulate the surface gets very hot.

So I think they settled on tiles that could operate hot enough to radiate away the power for high L/D spacecraft like the shuttle, and ablative tiles for low L/D spacecraft. (high L/D makes the rentry take a lot longer so you can dissipate the power at lower temperatures.)

[youtube]https://youtu.be/wly-YFGZbvA[/youtube]

It’s 3D panoramic, drag the perspective with a left click/drag or tap/hold/drag.

Cool.

From afar, the rocket looks like it isn't accelerating enough. But that's like looking at a 747 and thinking it isn't fly fast enough. The huge size means it appears slow but is actually moving really fast. The perception of speed is time to cover a body length, so larger objects appear to be slower.

This video makes it clear just how fast the rocket is going.

From liftoff to engines reaching the height of the nose cone: 7 seconds. I compute this is 0.5 G acceleration upward if constant. This jibes with 11,000,000 lbs mass and 17,000,000 lbsf thrust. Thus this video can be used to verify the 33 engines were operating pretty much at proper full power.

Mike C.