But still Henry, spacecraft re-enter just fine at the proper angle, why not
a kinetic warhead?
Ken
On Tue, Oct 5, 2021 at 1:05 PM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 5 Oct 2021, roxanna Mason wrote:
...Iron, maybe, but stone just bursts at high altitude...
Henry, I only heard Bob talk about the topic in general but I never saw
any plans if any existed. I assume the RV would have an ablative coating
or aeroshell to survive reentry. Bob was an accomplished engineer so I
think this was addressed satisfactorily.
Bob might not have known about it -- I think it was only more recently
that we came to understand that rocks have to be either quite small or
very large to avoid breaking up in the atmosphere. The issue is
structural strength, not heating: the stresses become quite large,
especially on a steep trajectory, and stone (natural or artificial) isn't
very strong except in compression. It can do its own ablating -- the
outer surfaces of meteorites are almost always melted, but the interior
stays cold -- but it's generally not strong enough.
Henry