Great photo........... Nice Mach diamonds
Me too. It has the same problem as conical soldering iron tips in that the cross-sectional area reduces according to the square of the distance. The area rapidly decreasing means there is less ability to conduct the heat from the tip away (or towards it in a soldering iron). Going to a chisel shape reduces the rate of change of area to a somewhat linear function rather than an unfriendly non-linear square function. Think about the tip vanishing to a line, rather than a point.That's pretty cool! I'm surprised they chose a conical nose cone.
Me too. It has the same problem as conical soldering iron tips in that the cross-sectional area reduces according to the square of the distance. The area rapidly decreasing means there is less ability to conduct the heat from the tip away (or towards it in a soldering iron). Going to a chisel shape reduces the rate of change of area to a somewhat linear function rather than an unfriendly non-linear square function. Think about the tip vanishing to a line, rather than a point.
The square function only applies for filled structures where the whole cross section is conducting. If it is assumed, that this is a hollow structure (weight, usable space), with roughly constant wall thickness the relationship becomes linear (or at least roughly).Me too. It has the same problem as conical soldering iron tips in that the cross-sectional area reduces according to the square of the distance. The area rapidly decreasing means there is less ability to conduct the heat from the tip away (or towards it in a soldering iron). Going to a chisel shape reduces the rate of change of area to a somewhat linear function rather than an unfriendly non-linear square function. Think about the tip vanishing to a line, rather than a point.
It still applies to the internal volume where structures and equipment can be used to move the heat away from the skin. The available volume reduces very quickly to a point.The square function only applies for filled structures where the whole cross section is conducting.
True, but it is similar geometrically and also a heat flow problem. In the case of conical soldering iron tips the outer skin (iron) is worse at heat conduction than the central core which is copper. The copper core stops a significant distance behind the pointy tip. I think the heat conductivity factor difference is around 20. Difficult to drive the heat to the pointy end. For the spacecraft the problem is conducting the heat to something that will distribute the heat flux on a greater area. The very tip of the vehicle does indeed suffer the same problem as the conical soldering iron tip in that the cross sectional area available for the heat flux to flow through becomes vanishingly small at the tip.All these things probably behave quite different than the heat flow in a soldering tip.
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