this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
652 points (95.5% liked)

Science Memes

11437 readers
1221 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

Hypersonic heating is really weird. We only have data going to about mach 17 (the HTV-2 was the fastest solidly atmospheric vehicle I found) but as we go from subsonic, to supersonic, to hypersonic regimes air becomes pretty much incompressible, and forms a really solid shockwave in front of a fast-moving object. Air is a pretty good thermal insulator, so for very fast, blunt objects they actually heat much slower than you might expect.

Tl;Dr it absolutely vaporized, but it likely lasted longer than you might expect.