{"id":35508,"date":"2011-05-22T15:42:50","date_gmt":"2011-05-22T15:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/spaceshiptwo-shows-off-new-clever-way-to-descend-wobbling-like-a-shuttlecock-80beats\/"},"modified":"2011-05-22T15:42:50","modified_gmt":"2011-05-22T15:42:50","slug":"spaceshiptwo-shows-off-new-clever-way-to-descend-wobbling-like-a-shuttlecock-80beats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/spaceshiptwo-shows-off-new-clever-way-to-descend-wobbling-like-a-shuttlecock-80beats.php","title":{"rendered":"SpaceShipTwo Shows Off New, Clever Way to Descend: Wobbling Like a Shuttlecock | 80beats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>What&rsquo;s the News:<\/strong> <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.virgingalactic.com\/\">Virgin Galactic<\/a>&rsquo;s plans for taking tourists into space have inched closer to fulfillment: earlier this month, the company&rsquo;s <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/80beats\/2008\/07\/28\/virgin-galactic-unveils-its-new-space-tourism-rocket\/\">SpaceShipTwo<\/a> successfully demonstrated the technique, called &ldquo;feathering,&rdquo; that will allow the ship to reenter Earth&rsquo;s atmosphere. In this video, you can watch the ship, designed to behave like a badminton shuttlecock, tip and roll as the pilot flips the craft&rsquo;s tail to a 65 degree angle, which will brake SpaceShipTwo while it&rsquo;s still high in the atmosphere. This means the ship will descend slowly enough to keep from igniting as it reenters.<\/p><p><strong>How the Heck:<\/strong><\/p><p> Velocity is the main reason objects burn up when they enter the Earth&rsquo;s atmosphere&mdash;the friction between a speeding meteor, say, and the gasses in the atmosphere is so great that the meteor ignites.<br>The Space Shuttle is covered with heat shields that absorb the heat generated by friction, but there are more elegant solutions for flights that don&rsquo;t need to go into orbit, including <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atmospheric_reentry#Feathered_reentry\">feathering<\/a>, which was first described in 1958. With this technique, part of the craft&rsquo;s tail flips up to increase drag early in the process, so as it hurtles deeper into the atmosphere it doesn&rsquo;t reach the velocities that result in ...<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/gkGpPaxZkwo-cP9oL0lbV2krmGA\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/8917f_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/gkGpPaxZkwo-cP9oL0lbV2krmGA\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/8917f_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/8917f_BV2fMC7ve08\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/8917f_nB3qj7uGqbk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&rsquo;s the News: Virgin Galactic&rsquo;s plans for taking tourists into space have inched closer to fulfillment: earlier this month, the company&rsquo;s SpaceShipTwo successfully demonstrated the technique, called &ldquo;feathering,&rdquo; that will allow the ship to reenter Earth&rsquo;s atmosphere. In this video, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/spaceshiptwo-shows-off-new-clever-way-to-descend-wobbling-like-a-shuttlecock-80beats.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}