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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Thursday, February 06, 2003 :::
The first, quick explanation for the Columbia incident, that tiles were knocked loose 80 seconds after launch, has had doubt cast on it. If it was accelerating straight upward at twice gravity — so the passengers would experience triple their normal weight — then that was at basically the same hight at which it came apart. How would the heating experienced from that point on up compare to the heating experienced coming back down to that hight? In the latter case, to be sure, they're trying to convert speed into heat, while in the former they're trying to slip through the atmosphere as best they can, but unless it took a couple minutes of jostling before they really became unsited, it seems like the problem had to be of a particular order of magnitude in order to be a problem down and not up.
Thinking more about my surprise that more stuff didn't burn up on the way down, it occurs to me that it would have to have burned up before slowing to terminal velocity unless that was high enough for it to burn up later. In a thin atmosphere, you're going to lose speed (and gain heat) more slowly than at lower altitude, so it really shouldn't have been such a surprise. Meteors that burn up come in faster than the Columbia was going at that point, and probably make it to the stratosphere with a lot of that speed left.
::: posted by dWj at 1:24 PM
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