History Main / FrictionlessReentry

It's fairly common for fiction to ignore this little inconvenient fact, because it means characters and impractically designed spaceships can get onto (or off) a planet without burning up. It simply doesn't include an atmosphere. In some cases, AppliedPhlebotinum is used (DeflectorShields are a common method for sufficiently advanced sci-fi cultures; shields that can block a nuclear weapon can usually also handle reentry), or the ship simply slows down before reentry to avoid burning up. The latter isn't necessarily too unrealistic for a ship which is using nuclear engines, or otherwise doesn't need to worry about fuel (or balancing fuel consumption with arrival time). If you have enough energy, cooling and propellant (the latter two are still needed until the air itself becomes dense enough to be useful), you can move as slowly as you want, but "enough" here is ''really big''. The issue for all current orbital spacecraft is that they need to use most of their fuel to lift fuel (not crew or payload) to the altitude where it will be burned, and a ship that used its engines to slow down would be much more expensive since it'd have to carry '''even more''' fuel.

* Averted in the [[PixarShorts ''Cars Toon'']] "Moon Mater", which is about [[WesternAnimation/{{Cars}} Mater]] becoming a moon rover as part of a moon mission to rescue an "autonaut" named [[PunnyName Impala XIII]], who was trapped inside a crater on the Moon. On the way back to Earth, Mater (while narrating) actually adds his friend Lightning [=McQueen=] into his story, since [=McQueen=] thinks that Mater is making things up. Lightning [=McQueen=] is portrayed here as a reentry probe, and as he is heading back toward Earth, his body starts to heat up rapidly because of friction, and as a result he start screaming "Ow! Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot!" before finally landing in the ocean and sighing in relief.

** Averted (?) In ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'', the ''Enterprise'' is in freefall after the damage the ''Vengeance'' has caused and the ship starts burning up. Sulu even says that, without the shields, they'll burn up - you see panels being torn off as its in freefall. However, the ''Enterprise'' ''doesn't'' burn up - it's heavily ravaged from all the shit it went through, but it's still flyable. Even worse, when the ''Vengeance'' zips pass mere seconds later, it isn't even ''harmed at all''!

** That being said, there has been no case in the entire series of an organic character falling from the upper atmosphere without being in a vehicle designed for it or tapping into the [[RealityWarper reality-warping]] power of the Chaos Emeralds to protect them. It seems ascending is just fine in the Sonic games, but descending is always lethal.

** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' "The Arsenal of Freedom", this is averted when Geordi uses the friction from atmospheric reentry to expose a cloaked drone harassing the ''Enterprise''.

** ''In Han Solo at Star's End'', the Millennium Falcon uses its shields to offset the heat of entering the atmosphere of Duroon.

For any spacecraft which travels through the Earth's atmosphere, there's a critical thing which needs to be considered beforehand. Space travel is ''fast'', and hitting the atmosphere at the kind of speed you'd have in orbit will make your spacecraft ''hot.'' Very hot. Atmospheric friction takes the form of a supersonic shockwave as the air can't flow out of the way fast enough and is superheated by tye resuting compression. If you attempt to plow through the air without sufficient shielding, disaster could (and indeed, horrifically, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster did at one point]]) occur.

For any spacecraft which travels through the Earth's atmosphere, there's a critical thing which needs to be considered beforehand. Space travel is ''fast'', and hitting the atmosphere at the kind of speed you'd have in orbit will make your spacecraft ''hot.'' Very hot [[note]]though despite the trope name, this is not primarily due to friction, but to ram pressure: the compression of air in front of the spacecraft as the spacecraft plows through[[/note]]. If you attempt to plow through the air without sufficient shielding, disaster could (and indeed, horrifically, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster did at one point]]) occur.

** In the pilot, we see a Reaver ship maneuvering to present its presumably better-shielded side to atmo, and the ship being surrounded by white-hot plasma. {{ShownTheirWork}}, indeed.

** During the very first X-Wing book, Corron actually uses a planet's atmosphere to damage a TIE fighter by luring it close enough to the planet during a dogfight to cause reentry heat to begin building up.

It's fairly common for fiction to ignore this little inconvenient fact, because it means characters and impractically designed spaceships can get onto (or off) a planet without burning up. It simply doesn't include an atmosphere. In some cases, AppliedPhlebotinum is used (DeflectorShields are a common method for sufficiently advanced sci-fi cultures; shields that can block a nuclear weapon can usually also handle reentry), or the ship simply slows down before reentry to avoid burning up. The later isn't necessarily too unrealistic for a ship which is using nuclear engines, or otherwise doesn't need to worry about fuel (or balancing fuel consumption with arrival time). If you have enough energy, cooling and propellant (the latter two are still needed until the air itself becomes dense enough to be useful), you can move as slowly as you want, but "enough" here is ''really big''. The issue for all current orbital spacecraft is that they need to use most of their fuel to lift fuel (not crew or payload) to the altitude where it will be burned, and a ship that used its engines to slow down would be much more expensive since it'd have to carry '''even more''' fuel.

It's fairly common for fiction to ignore this little inconvenient fact, because it means characters and impractically designed spaceships can get onto (or off) a planet without burning up. It simply doesn't include an atmosphere. In some cases, AppliedPhlebotinum is used (DefelctorShields are a common method for sufficiently advanced sci-fi cultures; shields that can block a nuclear weapon can usually also handle reentry), or the ship simply slows down before reentry to avoid burning up. The later isn't necessarily too unrealistic for a ship which is using nuclear engines, or otherwise doesn't need to worry about fuel (or balancing fuel consumption with arrival time). If you have enough energy, cooling and propellant (the latter two are still needed until the air itself becomes dense enough to be useful), you can move as slowly as you want, but "enough" here is ''really big''. The issue for all current orbital spacecraft is that they need to use most of their fuel to lift fuel (not crew or payload) to the altitude where it will be burned, and a ship that used its engines to slow down would be much more expensive since it'd have to carry '''even more''' fuel.

It's fairly common for fiction to ignore this little inconvenient fact, because it means characters and impractically designed spaceships can get onto (or off) a planet without burning up. It simply doesn't include an atmosphere. In some cases, AppliedPhlebotinum is used, or the ship simply slows down before reentry to avoid burning up. The later isn't necessarily too unrealistic for a ship which is using nuclear engines, or otherwise doesn't need to worry about fuel (or balancing fuel consumption with arrival time). If you have enough energy, cooling and propellant (the latter two are still needed until the air itself becomes dense enough to be useful), you can move as slowly as you want, but "enough" here is ''really big''. The issue for all current orbital spacecraft is that they need to use most of their fuel to lift fuel (not crew or payload) to the altitude where it will be burned, and a ship that used its engines to slow down would be much more expensive since it'd have to carry '''even more''' fuel.

** Hikaru's VF-1 get's quite hot and beat-up during its re-entry during the climactic battle.
** While it does generate a lot of heat the YF-19 shows just how far craft have come in ''Anime/{{Macross Plus}}'' since it not only makes a safe re-entry but it does so completely unpowered and spinning uncontrollably while trying to avoid the orbital defence satellites.
** Also comes up in the final battle of ''Anime/MacrossFrontier: [[TheMovie Sayonara no Tsubasa]]'' when its commented that the Macross Quarter will burn up if they enter the atmosphere at full speed. So they make sure to get behind a large piece of debris to use as a heat shield. [[CrazyAwesome Then they proceed to]] ''[[SkySurfing sky surf it]].''

** In the first episode of ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing'', Heero's Wing Gundam is shown undergoing re-entry heating while approaching Earth. It would make sense that the Gundams built for Operation Meteor would be made to withstand such heating since they were built on the space colonies for the purpose of going to Earth.

** Contrary to popular belief, Friction contributes a relatively little amount of heat to reentry. The majority of the heat generated is actually from atmospheric compression, the spacecraft is moving so fast that the air in front of it can't get out of the way fast enough, so it gets squeezed, and when you squeeze a gas, you increase its temperature. Of course, most spacecraft do this ''on purpose'', as it's the easiest and cheapest way to slow the craft down enough that it doesn't [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou vaporize on contact with the surface of the planet]].

** In ''MobileSuitGundamSEEDAstray'', Lowe and the Red Frame ends up facing this problem when a fight with the Gold Frame sends him hurtling into the gravity well of Earth. His Junk Guild buddies, however, use their ship and the massive amount of junk they gathered as a shield to grab Lowe and ride it out to Earth. They wreck their ship in the process, though.

* Fully {{Averted| Trope}} in ''VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram'' as of version 1.0, which adds heating to the previously present slowdown effects of drag, necessitating heat shields to prevent burning up on re-entry. Note that the same effects can be achieved by ''any'' high-speed atmospheric travel, not just re-entry.

** Other parts of the SWEU, including some books in the same series, use the friction of atmospheric reentry in various ways. Attaching extra hulls to burn up during the descent lets a squadron of X-Wings disguise itself as part of a meteorite shower, letting them infiltrate a hostile world. In the NewJediOrder, the Wraiths have developed single-person reentry pods with ablation shielding for basically the same purpose.