why is atmosphere reentry such an issue? If it is just because of speed hitting the atmosphere why can’t the spacecraft just slow down before and synchronise with earth rotation?
In: 384
As folks noted, it would take tons of fuel to slow down. The enxt problem is most low orbit craft are around 350 miles up. If you slow them to zero mph over the ground/air mass, they then go into true frefall. Frefall in a vacuum gets you going really fast, really quickly. From 350, you accelerate to over 7400mph, so you are not much better off than before.
So now you can’t really slow down until 50k feet or so, and are traveling at 11,000 feet per second. So not much time for everything to go right, insane energy to bleed off without break equipment, or killing people with g forces.
Latest Answers