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Re: (meteorobs) P/2000 G1 & Vgeo

I don't know.  I am only familiar with the ablation nose cones.  Perhaps someone
out there who is familiar with heat sink nose cones can shed some light on the
subject of the effect of the conductivity.  Heat sink nose cones were made of
highly thermal conductive metal as I recall.  The person would have to be fairly
old because I think that technology was dropped in the sixties.

Paul O. Johnson wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robert Gardner" <rendrag@earthlinkdot net>
> To: <meteorobs@jovian.com>
> Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2000 6:01 PM
> Subject: Re: (meteorobs) P/2000 G1 & Vgeo
>
> > I am not sure that the thermal capacity of the meteor has much to do with
> this.
> > I think the meteor is behaving just like the ablation nose cones that were
> > designed in the 60s to deliver atom bombs.  Despite the high temperature
> at the
> > surface and the large amount of energy that was generated the interior
> right
> > below the surface remained cool.  The heat was carried off by the ablated
> > material.
>
> Robert,
>
> Would that not depend on the thermal conductivity of the meteor material? If
> the conductivity were low, most of the thermal energy generated by air drag
> would remain in the (low mass) outer region and thus quickly raise its
> temperature to the boiling point. After this outer layer ablated, a new
> outer layer would absorb the thermal energy until it too evaporated. This
> layered ablating process would continue until the entire meteor evaporated
> or the final meteorite struck the ground, whichever came first.
>
> If the meteor's conductivity were high, the thermal energy absorbed by the
> outer layer would quickly spread through the entire meteor, raising its
> temperature more uniformly toward the melting point.
>
> Paul O. Johnson
>
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