History and experience of overcoming thermal barriers in rocket and space technology: 1. Ballistic missiles

Abstract

This paper considers the history of overcoming “thermal barriers” in rocket and space technology. “Thermal barriers” do not let individual subassemblies, units of spacecrafts or whole spacecrafts to perform their task due to out-of-limit thermal loads. Designers of rockets and spacecrafts regularly face “thermal barriers” with special features related to intensity, intermittency, and duration of thermal loads. However, a universal solution for overcoming these barriers does not exist yet. In searching for such solutions, new ideas are born, methods and tools of mathematical modeling and experimentation are developed and perfected, new materials and technologies are created. This is the first paper in a series of papers devoted to the study of this problem.