this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
112 points (94.4% liked)
World News
32282 readers
699 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm 100 percent certain that this is a spacecraft or launcher fuel tank. I've worked on reentry analyses of spacecraft fuel tanks before, and I can tell you that these very commonly survive re-entry for several reasons.
Firstly, they are by far the largest components housed inside the vehicle's outer structure. The structure usually takes the brunt of the aerodynamic and thermal forces, protecting the tank from the largest destruction.
Secondly, the tank itself has to handle the huge fuel pressures involved (easily going towards many hundreds of atmosphere pressures!). This obviously means that incredibly tough materials have to be used.
Thirdly and finally, as can be seen in the pictures, their shape is symmetric, making the shape aerodynamically very unstable. This means the fuel tank has the tendency to tumble in the airstream. The tumbling continuously causes different parts of the tank to be exposed to the heat and other parts to cool down.
Fuel tanks are the major risk during reentry to people and other stuff on the ground, perhaps together with the massive engine blocks. To minimise the chances of hitting someone or something, re-entries are nearly always aimed at the Pacific Ocean, hence them being more likely to wash ashore in Australia.