"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
...
Mike Dennis wrote:
"Mike Dennis" wrote in message
news
Just how rough is a shuttle reentry? I've read a lot of reports in the
press over the years about "buffeting" during reentry, but I've never

Nobody know, huh? On this group I've heard of a lot of design points
argued
that "it has to be designed this way due to reentry buffeting and loads".
But it doesn't really seem like any of us know, do we?

Well, I'd start by looking for records of accellerometer data from shuttle
entries.

Have you spent a little while with the NASA search engine?

Yes, but what I've found doesn't seem to back up assertions of buffeting on
reentry. It looks to be quite the opposite: very smooth. I really can't
figure out why it appears so much different than, say, an Apollo command
module. Is it the flight profile, the shape, or something I'm overlooking.
I found a lot of stuff on why they designed the shuttle's TPS to handle
heavy vibrations, but the actual results appear quite benign. I know the
CFD tools available back then were primitive by today's standards, but was
NASA that far off?

I'm wondering how the shuttle's results might affect design of the TPS on
the CEV.

(Of course, I concede it's possible there is significant buffeting, but I'm
just not finding the evidence online.)