4 ms·

Answer: it would most likely burn up Original paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576525004047 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/

• NortySpock 1y ago
  Makes sense, the ISS is moving at ~Mach 25 relative to a fixed point on the ground. Not much survives at those speeds, in an atmosphere, without careful engineering.
  • kylehotchkiss 1y ago
    Is Mach the correct way to describe the speed of something traveling in (near) vacuum? Easier to say orbital velocity ~17,500mph or so.
  • thebruce87m 1y ago
    > Mach 25 The SR-71 story should be updated with an ATC speed request from the ISS.
• WJW 1y ago
  That is a cool paper. "However, the paper space plane experiences severe aerodynamic heating in the order of 10^5 W/m^2 for several minutes." I can see how that might be a problem for something made of paper. Interestingly, deformation from flying through a (thin) atmosphere at hypersonic speeds was not a large issue according to the paper.
  • xattt 1y ago
    Speed of sound is much lower at low pressure.
    • WJW 1y ago
      Sure but even at 32 km up it's still ~300 m/s, only about 15% less than the speed of sound at sea level. Let's say that by the time our hypothetical paper airplane start noticing drag the speed of sound is all the way down to 100 m/s. Hypersonic is mach 5+, so this implies speeds of at least 500 m/s. Most paper airplanes I ever built would not stand up to 500 m/s airspeeds, I can tell you.
• gnabgib 1y ago
  Which was submitted (a paper has a less catchy headline) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44513900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44513900