As the rescue team pried open the hatch and breathed in the spores, they did not know they would soon suffer the same fate as molding, decomposing Astronauts they were trying to save.
So I was reading into the reason why there's so much heat being generated when a capsule reenters. The main reason is because of the immense pressures that occur when the capsule reenters. But what really interested me was that when the capsule reenters, the "bluntness" of the capsule determines how far detached the shockwave would be. From my understanding, shockwaves form when the wave source travels faster than the speed of sound, creating this cone of waves. But if theres a blunt object that reenters, why is the shockwave somehow detached from the front of the object? For reference, this is what I'm referring to:
https://preview.redd.it/drid4jk1o4921.jpg?width=496&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a10633f594e8e1cce0f58f9f674405d2b7e07acb
From what I've read, the majority of the heating is at that dark line in front of the capsule. So is the space in between the capsule and the shockwave somehow cooler? If so, how? And why do pointier objects create waves that are so much closer to the source?
Don't Soyuz capsules reenter a couple times a year? You'd think with today's cameras there would be footage of them reentering, but I couldn't find any on YT. I could only find a few clips of them after their chutes deployed. Thanks!
I found a very interesting video of Alan Shepard's first suborbital flight and I was very surprised by the G-load. 11.5 G's would be way too much to handle for space tourists..
https://youtu.be/i-nCCcGUxGE?t=9m19s
