User: ted hh

re-entry heat

On: SpaceShipOne Captures the X Prize

my friend and i were trying to figure out why things burn up when reentering earth's atmosphere. sure we learned all the explanantions about friction etc when we were in sci class as kids but dont falling things reach terminal velocity and then just fall at a steady rate if this is the case then why dont you burn up if you skydive from really high up and please dont say its because space thingies are higher because then you have to explain the terminal velocity limit - i had thought falling things reached terminal velocity pretty quickly (i used to jump out of airplanes and thats what they told us anyway)- if things reach terminal velocity in a few seconds then who cares how high they are when they start if things fall faster when the atmoshere is thinnner or nonexistant then there should also be less friction because less air is terminal velocity higher in areas without atmosphere - so the thing gets going really fast and then hits atmosphere at a faster speed than what terminal velocity is in atmospheric conditions sorry about the stupid sounding question but when i was in sci class as a kid they kept "explaining things" without explaining them.