What’s the News:Virgin Galactic’s plans for taking tourists into space have inched closer to fulfillment: earlier this month, the company’s SpaceShipTwo successfully demonstrated the technique, called “feathering,” that will allow the ship to reenter Earth’s atmosphere. In this video, you can watch the ship, designed to behave like a badminton shuttlecock, tip and roll as the pilot flips the craft’s tail to a 65 degree angle, which will brake SpaceShipTwo while it’s still high in the atmosphere. This means the ship will descend slowly enough to keep from igniting as it reenters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er9-sTDhJ58 How the Heck:
Velocity is the major reason objects burn up when they enter the Earth’s atmosphere—the friction between a speeding meteor and the gasses in the atmosphere, as well as the heat generated by the compression of the gasses as the object bores Earthwards, is so great that the meteor ignites .
The Space Shuttle is ...
