Paper airplane to be launched from International Space Station

The Japanese team on the International Space Station will launch a paper airplane (co-designed with the Japan Origami Airplane Association) into the Earth's atmosphere -- the plane's been treated with heat-resisting stuff and is expected to survive reentry:

The researchers are scheduled to begin testing the strength and heat resistance of an 8 centimeter (3.1 in) long prototype on January 17 in an ultra-high-speed wind tunnel at the University of Tokyo’s Okashiwa campus (Chiba prefecture). In the tests, the origami glider – which is shaped like the Space Shuttle and has been treated to withstand intense heat – will be subjected to wind speeds of Mach 7, or about 8,600 kilometers (5,300 miles) per hour.
A large spacecraft such as the Space Shuttle can reach speeds of up to Mach 20 (over 15,200 mph) when it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere, and friction with the air heats the outer surface to extreme temperatures. The much lighter origami aircraft, which the researchers claim will come down more slowly, is not expected to burn up on re-entry.

Link (Thanks, Steve!)

(Image: A good loft, a Creative Commons Attribution Licensed photo from Old Sarge's Flickr stream)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Tomble

I thought it was compression, not friction that caused the build up of heat.
Jake0748

Does anybody know how long it might take for the paper plane to begin its reentry, how long it might take to actually land and what the chances are that it will ever be found if it does land?
macegr

#2: I believe the chance it lands where someone can find it is 29.18%.
Bob

YES! Finally! I’ve been waiting for exactly this item for years now!
sabik

#28: Heh, nice list – although if you think about it, most of these are actually quite close to real problems…

1) Dealing with the human sex drive on long-term missions is an important (if taboo) aspect of the larger human-issues side of any such missions.

2) Likewise, alterations in taste perception play into diet planning.

3) Your radar screen will show a bogie.

4) Somebody will beat you up, probably; however, medical treatment after decompression events is in its infancy. A few have been survived (on ground, not in space), but there’s a lot unknown about them. There’s a lot you can do with models and simulations, but at some stage you have to take actual live animals, throw them out the airlock and then try to resuscitate them. A lot of that can be done on the ground, of course.

5) The design of a space toilet is unglamorous but necessary, really.

The real problem with space research is that it’s so expensive and all the experiments are designed on the ground, mostly by people who’ve never been in space. It’s like someone who’s never seen water designing a boat. However, the only real solution to that is cheap access to space, which means either better rocket engines (high-impulse high-thrust) or that elevator someone was mentioning; not something that can really be solved by better engineering.
Idle Tuesday

Okay, I’m not a scientist, but what useful knowledge can be gained from this “experiment”? When I read this kind of stuff going on, I wonder if there wouldn’t be a better way to spend all that money used to fund NASA…like feed the poor, fund libraries and schools, find a cure for cancer.
cteegarden

According to this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

the space station has an orbital velocity of 27,700 km/sec or roughly 7700 meters/sec. and is orbiting at a height of 350 to 460 km above the earth.

Also according to wikipedia, drag from re-entry starts to become non-negligable at about 120 km altitude. So, the earthward velocity component when it finally drops to 120 km = sqrt(2 * 9.8 m/s/s * 230,000) is roughly 2,100 m/s.

Compared to the orbital velocity, that’s not a lot, but if you take the root of the squares of the two you end up with roughly 8,000 m/s or mach 23.

This is about as reasonable as seeing how a tissue survives a sustained 100 mph wind. They would have to use some sort of composite that can’t be reasonably termed paper for it to retain any structural integrity during deceleration to wind speeds.

This sounds like someone has been watching too much Bugs Bunny lately.
Maneki Nico

Why do I fear this is the end of the world in the making?

Paper airplane hits piece of space junk, knocks it off orbit. Piece of space junk hits micro meteor, alters its trajectory. [...] Giant meteorite hits planet Earth, kills all life forms.

Hooray for science?
Tommy

Yes, of course, any fun and whimsy invalidates everything NASA does.
Idle Tuesday

Ah! But the question is WHY do big corporations want to get into space. Mining rights? Big lasers to blast whatever bad guy you want (as long as you pay the price…whomever pays the price)? To find really hot green space chicks (a la Kirk)?

Hmmm!
bourquek

You can’t just throw a paper airplane out the window…you’ve got to shed a whole bunch of velocity (or alter the perigee of the orbit) or else it just goes round and round. I wonder how they plan to do that.
sirwebster

it say a Japanese crew aboard the International space station, this has absolutely nothing to do with NASA
Tom

The ISS is in an orbit between 350 and 450 km above the surface of the Earth. Although the atmosphere is considered to “end” at 100 km up, there is still a small but significant amount of atmospheric resistance. This may be easier to understand when you consider the speed relative to the atmosphere is getting on for 8 km/s.

A low-density object like a paper air-plane would be more strongly affected by this, although it may still take quite a while to deorbit. But even worst case it would be years, not decades. Remember how quickly Skylab came down from a similar orbit, although at a time of solar maximum rather than the minimum we’re now in. Solar activity causes the atmosphere to expand, producing more drag on spacecraft in lower orbits.

Scientists do this kind of thing for fun, and one can never predict what kind of good might come of it, what ideas it might inspire, what insights it might provide. All of the money spent on the exploration of space is spent on Earth, and it has served to inspire a generation of scientists and engineers who wind up doing all kinds of things, including curing cancer and empowering the poor to feed themselves.
SAE Miller

@#1: Aerodynamic heating may be caused by many different aerodynamic mechanisms. In this case I think they need to worry most about shock wave boundary layer interactions. That is, the shock waves from the body interacting with other parts of the ‘paper’ plane. Mach 7 flow produces Mach waves at an angle of 8.213 degrees. That is small, obviously, so the aerodynamic heating from this phenomena if they can’t avoid it will be the greatest. Your right in the fact that compressibility plays a role in the compressible turbulent boundary layer. This creates a recovery factor which will make the temperature on the surface of the vehicle slightly less than the stagnation temperature.

To me this whole project seems to be more of a materials and flight design experiment. This is not a fundamental study of fluid dynamics.

@#9: Nothing to do with NASA? Aren’t most of the modules of the ISS financially supported by the US and deployed by the space shuttle? I may be wrong.
ponzo

Ow! My EYE!

In space!
SkunkZer0

@IDLE TUESDAY

NASA’s budget is extraordinarily small. Something on the order of 15-17 billion annually. By comparison we spend over 38 times that on Defense, and 98 times that on social programs. Our budget in 2007 was 2.784 trillion, NASA is 0.58% of that. By contrast 1.581 trillion were spent on social programs, over 56% of the budget.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/898/1

The Space Review: Putting NASAâ€™s budget in perspective

Everyone needs to shut the eff up about us “wasting” money on NASA, and realize that we need to get on top of this whole space elevator situation, build some giant space dry docks, construct some enormous interstellar ships (while developing some sort of standard long term stasis, duh), and GET THE EFF OUT OF HERE.
ed g.

A minor correction to #6:

Paper airplane hits piece of space junk, knocks it off orbit. Piece of space junk hits micro meteor, alters its trajectory. [...] Giant meteorite hits planet Earth. All die. O the embarrassment.
rocketscience54

I think this is a very cool thing to do. Im tired of the ignorant liberals who think this, and NASA are a waist of money. Do you know how much metals are probably on Mars? How about new alloys, metals, or even other compounds that we could use on earth for our needs in materials like semiconductors and medicines and plastics. Ever wonder how much gold, platinum and diamonds are on the moon or other planets? How about doing some actual research before complaining about a new subject all the time. And by the way, there are lots of money, programs, and associatoins for curing cancer. Go look at how much has been done as a result of space age technology. Go do some research before whining all the time, you are bringing down the moral of everyone else.
Tex Lovera

Yeah, to hell with space research. If it was really viable, private corporations would be pushing to get into space.

Oh, wait…

http://www.space.com/news/051214_spaceport_newmexico.html
Idle Tuesday

I guess I must be wrong (or an moron) just because I question the reason for throwing paper airplanes out of a space station. I thought “religious” fundamentalists were rabid, unquestioning droids. I guess I’ve found a new group to be afraid of.

Yes, I am all for science and research, and I realize this costs a lot of money. Yes, I know that scientists learn and have learned wonderful things that help humankind. And yes, it would be “neat” to throw all sorts of things out of a space station just to see what happens. My only question was, “Is the expense of this type of research justified when there are better experiments or activities that could be done with that money?” I thought perhaps this would be a forum in which dissenting ideas would be welcomed just for the purpose of discussion. It bugs me when some people (not all, because I have learned some interesting things from the non-trolls) see an opinion they don’t like and start throwing the insults.
Idle Tuesday

The Other Michael,
“If we knew, we wouldn’t need to experiment.”

But before you experiment, you need to decide the purpose of the experiment, don’t you? You don’t just say, “Well, let’s attach electrodes to your head, and give ya a zap.”
Jake0748

The more I think about this the more I like it. Yes, maybe there is a “just for fun” aspect to it, (so what’s wrong with that?). But I don’t imagine that this particular “experiment” should cost that much. The people who came up with the heat-resistant material that will make up the plane are the ones who have put the time and money into it. The thing can’t weigh very much, so launch cost will be minimal and I’m sure they won’t make a special EVA to toss it. One of the astronauts will just tuck it up the sleeve of his space suit (yeah, yeah, I know.) and chuck it during a break in his/her activities.

I can think of several things that could be studied with this… aside from the properties of the special material itself. I can imagine a lot of info to gained about tracking such a small object (radar, lasers, whatever), both from space and the ground. The behavior of such a small, light object in the space, atmosphere interface, attempts at mathematical predictions of its landing site, etc. etc.

Seems like at least as good an idea as RFID tagging every fookin farm animal in the land.
Idle Tuesday

See this post http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/21/super-cockroaches-co.html to see how the Russian government is spending its hard-earned space money. I’d like to see Michael and SkunkZero explain how THIS kind of science benefits us.
sirwebster

@#11 I may have emboldened the wrong word, my point was NASA aren’t the people doing this experiment, it’s the Japanese, so people bitching about NASA wasting money on this are flat wrong.

The ISS has elements from many nations, I couldn’t tell you who provided what, but I do know the whole point of it is to provide a platform for anyone who wants to experiment with a place to do so. So this particular experiment has nothing to do with NASA, not the space station itself
dogu4

Small technical detail. The heating at re-entry is due to compression, not friction. It’s one of those erroneous scientific thingees that’s been repeated since Jules Bergman was in diapers.

I love what NASA was supposed to be, but not what it has become.
Idle Tuesday

I wasn’t trying to besmirch the wonderful work that NASA does. I’m only saying that these type of space experiments don’t seem to make sense. Yes, I know they’re Japanese and it is the Space Station, but I mean in general experiments like this seem pointless. Can’t they build a computer model to figure this out?

I know that 15-17 billion dollars is chump change for some of you high-rollers, but is there better ways of spending it? And yes, I know the US spends way more on weapons…that is bad, too. Can we all agree to that?

As for elevators to the moon…yeah, great idea. Let’s spending billions of dollars so we can go to another moon or planet so we can continue our degradation of environment. Why bother spending that money to fix the problems we’ve started here.
Idle Tuesday

You know, I just had an epiphany. I am wrong. This IS good science. Maybe we can create a list of other experiments that need to be done on the ISS. Hmm, let’s see…

1) What would happen if one was to have sex with an inflatable doll in the space station?
2) Do hamburgers taste better in space?
3) What happens to a one-pound ball of snot if it were to be thrown out of the space station?
4) What would happen if we were to throw a kitten out into space?
5) How difficult would it be to photocopy your arse in a zero-gravity environment?

Come on, folks! I’m a moron, so help me with my list. Let’s see if we can get to one hundred suggestions and then email it to the Japanese scientists.
Idle Tuesday

Oh and Tommy, fun and whimsy does invalidate what you do when there are people who could use the tax money better.
Michael

Well, this has those schmucks in New York beat all hollow. Now whenever anybody does a paper airplane bit on YouTube, the Japanese can say, “Shyeeah, but were you still in the atmosphere?”

Also, for the record, #5 Idle Tuesday is a moron. Thank you, that will be all.
jetsetsc

African or European paper airplane?
ill lich

Never grow up.
SkunkZer0

15-17 billion is a lot of money, yes, but when there is already 100 times as much being spent in the areas you are talking about spending it, I really think space exploration is a justifiable cost.

Maybe I am just a sci-fi nerd, and I do realize that interplanetary colonies are PROBABLY a ways out lol, but we really have been stagnated in that department for the last 25 years as their budget has dwindled.

Of course we need to solve the problems on our own planet but honestly, the two are not really related. 15-17 billion dollars is a lot of money but its worth nothing when nobody knows how to spend it…

NASA and its attached research facilities have brought to market some of the most important consumer technologies currently available. I for one hope with all my might that J. Edgar DID steal all of Tesla’s documents and NASA has all kinds of crazy super technology, please let that be reality. But any way you look at it we need to keep NASA alive.

You know whats funny I am totally not a NASA fanboy, Idle Tuesday just made me become one today I suppose.
the Other michael

>Okay, I’m not a scientist, but what useful knowledge can be gained from this “experiment”?

If we knew, we wouldn’t need to experiment.