• Question: Why don't the astrouts get burnt when they go through the atmosphere in a rocket? How long does it take to bild a rocket?

    Asked by morgana97 to Evan on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Evan Keane

      Evan Keane answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Good question. And you are correct – if you came through the atmosphere unprotected you would get burnt up. This is why the space shuttles have specially designed protective surfaces on the outside. These protective layers can withstand huge amounts of heat (they are great insulators).

      If they didn’t have them the shuttle could burn up. One time, in 2003, some of this protective stuff was knocked off by mistake when the shuttle launched, and then when the shuttle tried to come back to Earth it did not have the protection it needed and it did burn up. The 7 astronauts onboard all died 🙁

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