withstanding sever heat

[dragon]

Ok these new heat ablators are being tested by applying heat equivelant to 1500 suns. Thats alot of radiant heat but gives a good test for the new heat shields. So how much heat is this thing being exposed to.

September 8

Titanic Heat of 1,500 Suns

Something’s burning at the Sandia National Laboratories’ National Solar Thermal Test Facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And that’s good news.

Scientists and engineers at Sandia are seeing how materials used for NASA’s future planetary exploration missions can withstand severe radiant heating. The tests apply heat equivalent to 1,500 suns to spacecraft shields called Advanced Charring Ablators. The ablators protect spacecraft entering atmospheres at hypersonic speeds.

The test facility includes a 200-feet (some 60 meters) “solar tower” surrounded by a field of hundreds of Sun-tracking mirror arrays called heliostats. The heliostats direct sunlight to the top of the tower where the test objects are affixed.

Sandia and Applied Research Associates, Inc. are conducting the tests for NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s In-Space Propulsion/Aerocapture Program. The R&D effort is tied to NASA’s plan for a future Titan mission with an orbiter and lander. Titan is Saturn’s largest moon.

The tests are designed to simulate atmospheric heating of spacecraft that enter Titan, including low levels of convective heating combined with relatively high levels of thermal radiation.

http://www.space.com/astronotes/astronotes.html

[Darth Wong]

What do they mean by "1500 suns?" 1500 times the intensity of solar radiation at 1 AU from the Sun? A face-value interpretation of that line would mean that this system puts out 1500 times the Sun's total radiation, which is impossible.

[tharkûn]

What do they mean by "1500 suns?" 1500 times the intensity of solar radiation at 1 AU from the Sun? A face-value interpretation of that line would mean that this system puts out 1500 times the Sun's total radiation, which is impossible.

The average intensity of the reflected sunlight on the target is 1500 times the normal intensity. Lousy terminology, but we are stuck with it.