What's the HP angle?
That's "Harry Potter" not "Hewlett Packaging^H^H^H^Hrd".
You know, broomsticks, quidditch, cloaks...?
NASA has announced a successful live test of a prototype inflatable heat shield for re-entry to a planet's atmosphere. The blow-up shield could have important implications for future missions to Mars - and also, perhaps, for the nascent field of orbital spacesuit skydiving. The test unit is known as the Inflatable Re- …
The inflatable bladder held up OK. Now how's about the bladder for the guys riding on it? I bet one or two of them are going to widdle themselves, coming down at umpty-tum hundred degrees at umpty-tum hundred miles an hour.
Still, it's a fine solution to the old "bail-out-of-the-Space-Shuttle" problem. So if your Shuttle gets a knackered wing on launch now, you can park it at the ISS and come back on your own little pod. Then the next Shuttle can bring up a repair kit.
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