At 01:41 PM 8/10/2009, you wrote:
I'm crunching numbers right now, but just thought of something
ICBM's If we were to nuke RUSSIA or visa versa, while these yes do not get to orbit, they do get to just shy of orbital velocity, and re enter the atmosphere, did they have all these elaborate heat shields?
I believe a lot of work on atmospheric entry (i.e. heat shielding) systems did actually start from the early days of ICBMs for this very reason. I don't think the speeds are that close to orbital speeds (one only needs to fall 3000 miles away, not 8000+), though they are high enough that the warheads must be designed to survive re-entry.
There's a bit about ICBM re-entry systems on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_reentry
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