On Sun, 2 Feb 2003, David Weinshenker wrote:
> > >I have never liked ablative methods. Yet they seem to be the best.
> > I have a simple philosophy: Do What Works. Ablatives work.
>
> A fundamental issue here seems to be that the Shuttle TPS tile system
> has been just barely adequate at best...
It is almost certainly impossible to meet the shuttle TPS requirements
(performance and mass budget) with ablative TPS.
A high-L/D reentry like the shuttle's is mild but lengthy; the peak
heating rate is modest, perhaps 1/3 of a blunt body's, but the total heat
load is very high, 3-4x a blunt body's. This badly penalizes expendable
coolants of all kinds, including ablators. They score best on the short
sharp reentries of semiballistic capsules, base-first wingless SSTOs,
etc., because they can handle high heating rates easily but their mass
scales up roughly linearly with total heat load.
Henry Spencer
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