Word: layers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When Astrolite is exposed to a blast of high-temperature gas, a thin layer of the plastic on the surface burns off, leaving a mat of silica fibers arranged so that they cannot be easily blown away. At 3,000° F. (about the melting point of iron), they begin to soften, but melted silica is sticky, viscous stuff that clings tight until it turns to vapor. The vaporizing process draws heat from the remaining Astrolite and tends to keep it cool...
...melts at about 450° F.), but it is remarkably successful against short attacks of extreme heat. It is used in 20 types of missiles, sometimes in the nose cones, sometimes in other hot spots such as the nozzles of rocket motors. The Thompson company says that a laminated layer of Astro-lite two-tenths of an inch thick can protect the nose of an IRBM. For an ICBM, which enters the atmosphere much faster, four inches may be needed. This thickness weighs, says Thompson, only one-fifteenth as much as a heat-resistant metal used for the same...
When a re-entry body hits the atmosphere at 13,000 m.p.h.. a shock wave forms a few inches ahead of it. Between the wave and the body is a fast-flowing layer of air heated to something like 12,000° F. At this temperature about 2% of the air's atoms are ionized, i.e., broken into electrons and positively charged ions. The mixture, which physicists call a plasma, is a conductor of electricity...
...meets resistance and therefore slows down. Physicist Neuringer's proposal is to create a strong magnetic field on the front surface of the re-entry body. When ionized air flows across it, the braking action of the magnetism will make it pile up in a deeper, slower moving layer that will not transfer as much heat to the solid surface...
...work slicing away the sand dunes when one day its driver noticed that he was grazing what seemed to be scorched pavement with jewel-encrusted slabs. Archaeologist Moshe Prausnitz, British-trained senior inspector of Israel's Department of Antiquities, arrived on the scene, found a loose layer of burned mosaic floor, and under that two layers of superb mosaic that seemed to be virtually undamaged...