Steel for Shuttle

On Nov/15/2019 at 03:35, JF Mezei wrote :
On 2019-11-14 19:54, Alain Fournier wrote:

Steel has much lower conductivity than aluminium. So this isn't as much
a problem as it would be if aluminium was used.

As I recall, no aluminium was bare on the shuttle, was all protected by
tiles/blankets. And the tiles were thick and heavy to ensure the
aluminium remain nice and comfy cool.

Depends on what you call comfy cool. According to
https://www.airspacemag.com/how-thin...iles-12580671/
"The tiles keep the orbiter’s aluminum skin at 350 degrees or less."
They don't say it that site, but those are Fahrenheit degrees, so that
is 177 Celsius degrees. That's comfy and cool enough for the aluminium
structure to conserve integrity but it is way to hot for electronics or
humans. It wasn't much of an issue because it was only for a short while
and only the outer surface of the aluminium structure experienced those
temperatures. But once the Shuttle was on the ground, you wanted to let
that heat dissipate. And since the tiles were such great insulation,
that heat didn't dissipate all that well outwards.


Alain Fournier