this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 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.