11–20 of 63 posts
But what happens if the Chinese recover pieces of it from the ocean and figure out how to waste trillions of dollars to no good effect too? /sarcasm Wouldn't we have been much better served using all that money to figure out how to manufacture more/better microchips? The StarTrek fantasy will still be there in a century or two.
I get there is no air in space, and how thin it is as you approach the Earth's surface. But it is a gradient after all.
If a falling body begins to heat up, that suggests it has entered a region with some atmosphere — and so some parachute utility.
In my mind the effectiveness of the parachute would track the rise in atmospheric density — just as the rise in atmospheric density became a heat issue. In other words, the parachute would slowly become effective, enough so to keep the falling body from ever attaining a speed that generates too much heat (with regard to the density of the atmosphere it is traversing).
How is the model in my head wrong? Does the parachute effectiveness lag with regard to the rise of the "heat gradient"?
But what happens if the Chinese recover pieces of it from the ocean and figure out how to waste trillions of dollars to no good effect too? /sarcasm Wouldn't we have been much better served using all that money to figure out how to manufacture more/better microchips? The StarTrek fantasy will still be there in a century or two.
But what happens if the Chinese recover pieces of it from the ocean and figure out how to waste trillions of dollars to no good effect too? /sarcasm Wouldn't we have been much better served using all that money to figure out how to manufacture more/better microchips? The StarTrek fantasy will still be there in a century or two.
https://www.issnationallab.org/iss360/probing-proteins-lever...
I never understood why a free-fall from space with a parachute would not work. (I bring this up because I would propose bringing down sections of ISS with extremely large parachutes.) I get there is no air in space, and how thin it is as you approach the Earth's surface. But it is a gradient after all. If a falling body begins to heat up, that suggests it has entered a region with some atmosphere — and so some parach…
Crazy idea: are there enough space nerds who would pay for a small momento piece of ISS that it might be worthwhile to disassemble it in space and bring parts back to Earth?
I never understood why a free-fall from space with a parachute would not work. (I bring this up because I would propose bringing down sections of ISS with extremely large parachutes.) I get there is no air in space, and how thin it is as you approach the Earth's surface. But it is a gradient after all. If a falling body begins to heat up, that suggests it has entered a region with some atmosphere — and so some parach…
Heating is all concentrated on a single profile.
I never understood why a free-fall from space with a parachute would not work. (I bring this up because I would propose bringing down sections of ISS with extremely large parachutes.) I get there is no air in space, and how thin it is as you approach the Earth's surface. But it is a gradient after all. If a falling body begins to heat up, that suggests it has entered a region with some atmosphere — and so some parach…
It depends what you mean by "from space". The ISS is in space and also _in orbit_, so is moving laterally at about 17,500 mph / 28,000 km/h / 7777 m/s / Mach 22 (1)
It's not just about falling, it's about the heat and stress of hitting the air when moving sideways at nearly 8 kilometres per second.
The "sub-orbital hop" scenario that Bezos and Branson do involves technically "falling from space" but is very different as they're not moving sideways.
1) https://www.space.com/16748-international-space-station.html