After four years of debugging, recent tests have shown that it does, indeed, run quietly at Mach 6. The wind tunnel airflow has about one-tenth to one-thirtieth of the noise in other high-speed wind tunnels. |
Designers are considering a new re-entry vehicle with a metal skin. This would eliminate the tile system used on the space shuttle, which is expensive to maintain. |
It's pretty tight quarters. If you are claustrophobic, this would not be the right job for you. |
Laminar airflows can have eight times less heating than turbulent ones. |
We all tend to collect these things because it's a little bit of a nuisance to dispose of them. |