Dandelion Re-entry Vehicle

For re-entry from orbit, a critical factor is dissipating orbital kinetic energy into the atmosphere to slow the spacecraft down. The most popular way of doing this is to have a roughly-conical reentry vehicle with ablative heat shields on the scorchy side. Made of expensive, fragile materials that burn up, these release a somewhat protective ionised gas boundary layer that radiates away the heat/energy. The rate of heating and the total heat are critical to re- entry and together dictate the re-entry strategy/design. A steep entry reduces the total heat, but increases the peak heating. A shallow entry, the reverse.

The area of the re-entry body is critical to the rate of heating, and the heat per unit area of airframe. But wind- facing area is generally dictated by the launch architecture.

So, this idea is to have a re-entry body that has a large effective area of a “springy” perhaps carbon composite semi-ablative canopy - the springiness allows the fronds to be folded compactly within the launch vehicle. Once unfurled, they deliver drag and dissipate heat, but over a much larger area.