Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "" video.

  1. HEY SCOTT - AEROSPACE engineer here. The term you are looking for when describing the shock wave of the blunt nose of the Space Shuttle is "Detached Shock." and sometimes its also called a "Bow Shock" because its created by the bow of the space craft and in some ways resembles the bow wave of a ship if it has also has a blunt nose. The other kind of shock is called an attached shock because its origin is the leading point of the aircraft (nose, wing, tail,...) and if you look at the Wikipedia page for Schlieren photography theirs 2 black and white photographs showing attached shocks. As for the heat problem this is a point I have been arguing with space fans for a couple of years now. Ever since Jeff Bezos said we should move all the heavy industry like iron ore smelting off planet It s been damn frustrating to explain it again and again. As I have said to you previously I have spent time in Australia's iron ore industry. I went there for mining experience after being advise by Harisson Schmitt (Apollo 17) that we'd be going back to the moon to mine for Helium-3. So I am more than a little familiar with how much iron ore Australia produces and can do the calculations for what it would take to launch it into LEO and MORE IMPORTANTLY get it back down and its the getting it back down that's the real problem. As you point out things in orbit have a lot of kinetic energy that has to be dissipated. If we are taking a few tons of space craft yeah sure that's doable. HOWEVER when we are talking about 2 Giga tons (yeah 2 billion tons) of iron which is around the amount of iron we produce each year from the more than 3 Giga tons of iron ore we dig up. Its the kinetic energy equivalent of several 1,000 atomic weapons depending on which one you compare it to. Yeah just go plug 2,000,000,000,000 kg at 7,500 m/s into a kinetic energy calculator and then compare that number to the yield of the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima. So it really wouldn't matter how we did it, little chunks, big chunks, parachutes or wings the fact is if we actually tried we likely burn the atmosphere right off the planet, because its not a once and done its something we'd be doing every year. There are 2 other ways to avoid re-entry that you didn't mention. 1) Don't go into space in the first place; and 2) Don't come back if you do go.
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