Pierce Nichols wrote: > Another thing that comes out of my reading of the SERV document is > how much the heating will vary across the base heatshield and across the > re-entry profile. At peak heating, the coolest part of the base heat shield > has a heat transfer rate of 244 kJ/sec-m^2. Therefore, relatively fine > control of the amount of water being delivered to each portion of the heat > shield will need to be readily controllable in order to prevent the waste > of a great deal of water.
Or an ablative shield could be thickness-contoured to suit the variation of total heat load over its surface. How does overall mass-effectiveness of a solid ablator compare with that of a fluid-cooled "wet" shield? The solid one has the advantage that it's basically a static structural panel - it just has to be there, it doesn't require plumbing and accurate control of liquid flow. -dave w _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
