How to design an organic heat-shield?
When they started dropping from the skies.. or no, they landed. They were so similar to us, yet so different. Like nothing we would've ever designed or created - but so much like everything
Eyewitness account, 2 weeks after 'The Event'
For first-encounter project I am working on, my version of humanity is being encountered by aliens from space. They are intended to be not too human-like - because that would be too interesting. But also not too much like the usual bugs.. more like fleshy engineering things.
Their technology is starkly based on biology and chemistry, rather than metallurgy.
For this scene, and really all situations where I have them use the technology in question, they are entering the earth's atmosphere inside huge wart-like lumps of flesh(?) - their version of droppods/dropships.
Q: How to design an organic heat-shield for (re)entry of an earth-like atmosphere?
I have imagined something along the lines of interchanging layers of callus for structure & something to be burned off, and blubber for thermal insulation. But I am by no means a biologist/chemist, and only a hobby-engineer..
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/141147. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
Make them sweaty.
Bit of background: SpaceX is redesigning their Starship Super Heavy (aka BFR) to be made from stainless steel, and plan to have it sweat as a heat shield.
The basic concept is that tiny pores on the forward surface will "sweat" out liquid methane fuel, which will absorb the heat and blow away, keeping the stainless steel below the melting point.
Your visitors could store large amounts of compressed liquid methane, harvested from comets or produced by their own bodies, and feed it out through their pores as they aerobrake.
Combined with toughened skin that can handle high temperature, and reverse thrusting to reduce velocity a bit before reentry, and a way to lose speed quickly like a parachute or something, and they should survive.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads