Some thoughts from Eric Drexler. I only met him a couple times, but he was an impressive man.
2 thoughts on “Remembering Arthur Kantrowitz”
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Some thoughts from Eric Drexler. I only met him a couple times, but he was an impressive man.
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My understanding is that his work in shock tubes allowed for a kind of wind tunnel experiment to test reentry vehicles.
You can’t really build a mach 20 wind tunnel, but the shock tube simulated hypersonic conditions through low gas density, short durations of high speed gas flow, and heating of the gas to simulate the compression heating of the gas flow occuring during reentry.
Other contributors to the reentry vehicle problem were Faget and Gilruth, who placed small model of RV’s at the tips of solid fuel rockets that they launched to get test data.
This work lead to the concept of the blunt body reentry vehicle. The intuition was to develop a low drag needle nose shape, but contrary to that intuition, a high drag blunt shape had the shock wave carry away the heat from the vehicle. This work also helped test the ablative heat shield, where the vaporization of a plastic soaked up the heat. These concepts were key to the development of ballistic missiles, the Corona-Discoverer film capsule recovery, and the entire manned space program.
Last line in the Times article…
Writing in this newspaper in 1971, he said: “I submit that a space program directed toward exhibiting that there are no visible limits to man’s future in the universe could be a most important help in reviving faith in the hope of progress. I can imagine nothing more relevant to our current problems.”
That’s the Change I still belive in.