SPACE scientists looking for new ways to cool spacecraft on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere are turning to one of the world’s oldest coolants: water.
Existing heat-shield technology leaves a lot to be desired. In the 1960s Apollo rockets used a heat shield that burnt off slowly – but this is no good for reusable spacecraft like NASA’s fleet of space shuttles. And the silica tiles the shuttle uses are fragile and prone to damage.
So space-flight engineers from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands are playing with the idea of using water. They believe water boiling off and evaporating…
