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X-37B Secret Space Plane To Land Soon
Phoghat writes "The highly classified X-37B Space Plane is scheduled to land soon. It was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on April 22 atop an Atlas 5 rocket, and the Air Force is still being very secretive on all aspects of the flight. We do know that it's set to touch down at Vandenberg Air Force Base's 15,000-foot runway, originally built for the Space Shuttle program. In many ways, the craft resembles a Shuttle with stubby wings, landing gear and a powerful engine that allows the craft to alter its orbit (much to the dismay of many observers on the ground). Its success has apparently given new life to its predecessor, the X-34, which had been mothballed."
The direction of that fall is mainly controlled by the forward motion of the craft and the centrifugal effect by that speed allows it to stay in orbit above the atmosphere.
So once you start breaking this forward speed, usually by firing rockets, the gravity starts to win from the centrifugal force and the craft starts to come down.
When you brake carefully the craft will slowly enter the atmosphere and now be slowed down when encountering the high altitude atmosphere, the problem is the speed at that time is still extremely high causing a lot of friction heat.
Would you brake hard with the rockets the craft would fall out of orbit much quicker and enter the denser parts of our atmosphere much sooner causing extreme friction braking and heat, basically the craft would burn up like a meteorite.
So the trick is to brake in a sensible way and have a craft that can withstand the inevitable friction heat long enough to slow down and enter navigable levels of the atmosphere where the wings can take over.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Black items will ABSORB more light. When light (i.e. the energy contained in a photon) is absorbed by a molecule, there are a certain number of likely fates for this energy. Remember, 'what goes up, must come down'
Yes, remember that. Black items will absorb more light, and also radiate exactly that much more heat.
The perfect absorber is also the perfect transmitter. Anything else would be a violation of the first law of thermodynamics, and we can't go around breaking them laws, now can we?