3 ms·

Any reason why they let it sit on the runway unattended for so long? I would imagine a flurry of vehicles descended on them immediately upon touchdown. It seem

• ErrantX 15y ago
  The crew are doing final checks and making it "safe" - and the ground grew do remote external checks for leaks etc. (there are a few toxic bits and pieces they don't want to walk into if they are leaking :)).
  • lutorm 15y ago
    I imagine it's also quite hot...
    • ErrantX 15y ago
      Interestingly... no. The heat tiles are an incredibly cool* bit of engineering that retain heat like mad. To the extent that you can technically pick up a panel that is super-hot inside and it will take a reasonable lenght of time to actually burn you! (the quote I remember reading was that at 750 Celsius inside, it would take around 15 seconds to burn you). They are designed specifically like this to slowly soak up the heat of re-entry (because if they heated up too fast it, obviously, makes them useless :)). Think "thermos flask". The tiles (at least the outside of them) cool significantly during the latter stage of the re-entry glide so are maybe... 100-200 Celsius upon landing. You can brush against them and not feel it. (all of this is my recollection from reading a technical paper some years ago about the HRSI tiles they use) * err, pun not intended :) honest
      • lutorm 15y ago
        cool significantly during the latter stage of the re-entry glide Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Makes me think of how people have picked up metorites that have just landed and noticed that they are cold. (Though that's because the hot part has been ablated away during descent and the inside is space-temp, i.e. quite cold.)