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Re: (meteorobs) Meteorites and Terminal velocity

George,

     Good point about Appollo 13, but I think if you add -240o F, the 
temperature in the shade and +200o F, the sun side of the craft, you get 
-40o F, and isn't that about the temperature they struggled with? As for 
iron, it transmitts heat more efficiently than cold, so it would be warmer. 

        The other day when looking up Cherenkov Lights when the subject was 
lights in the sky, I ran across a Nasa site that was posted on 21 Nov 2000 
with the Apollo 15 flight journal, Apollo 13 isn't posted yet.
   http://www.hq.nasadot gov/office/pao/History/ap15fj/index.htm

     The tempering of iron is a manufactuing process and is more involved 
than heating and cooling. It requires that certain temperatures be used, 
heating slowly to low cherry red or a cherry red (1470o F to 1650o F), 
quenching part of the steel then polishing it while the heat transfer return 
a straw yellow to a brown yellow color to the tip (460o F to 500o F) then 
it's quenched again. The grain structure is changed during working the 
steel in preperation to tempering where the grain is drawn out in in 
repeated heatings and workings to shape the steel (Arizona Lode Gold Mines 
and Gold Mining, Bul. 137,  1967) an old friend.

     Nick Martin suggested that some combination of oxides could cause the 
meteorites to burn after being exposed to high temperatures during entry. 
Lew promply suggested to Nick that he take his idea and get out of Dodge. 
Marco now has suggested something similar but more exotic. The Mazapil 
Meteroite narrative offers an insight, "At once the corral was covered with 
a phosphoescent light, while suspended in the air were small luminous 
sparks as though from a rocket." And, "I saw this luminous air disappear, 
and there remained on the ground only such a light as is made when a match 
is rubbed."  Something was going on, maybe it was the detected 0.3% 
phosphorus burning once it was ignited. 

     I want to persue other projects at this time, we have to wait for science 
to answer some of our questions and ideas here.

                                                 Dave English

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