History Main / ReentryScare

* Soyuz 1 suffered a huge number of malfunctions during its ill-fated mission, culminating in the failure of the landing retros and parachutes intended to slow the capsule's impact with the ground to something survivable. Rumour has it that the sole crew member's last radio transmission consisted of him cursing the engineers to Hell as he plummeted to his death.

* Of course, given that the series was rather closely aping the original ''MobileSuitGundam'', a similar scene happened there, too. In the TV series, he had a special heat-deflecting coating he had to put on mid-reentry, while in the movie the Gundam survives by being just that tough. Amuro fares much better than Kira, however.

The process of atmospheric entry can be compared to hitting treacle after a ride across ice (or, if you're American, suddenly hitting a wall of peanut butter during an easy downhill jog). A fast-moving object compresses air before it, generating a lot of heat in the process. In fact, there are not many substances that can withstand the heat generated, and most spacecraft have an ablative heat shield that burns off during re-entry, which requires the spacecraft to come in at a fairly precise angle. This itself is a danger because if the craft comes in at too low angle, it can literally bounce off the atmosphere and trap it in space, while if it comes in at too high an angle, no heat shield can save the craft from being destroyed by the heat.

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** To be fair, most of the Gundams will have a "heat shield" of sorts. Whether it's their armor being made of a very heat-resistant metal (Gundam Wing), having active shielding (Gundam SEED), or in the case of the RX-78 Gundam itself, holding up its shield in a way that spreads the heat around it, they tend to survive rather well. Some justification goes into having the suits survive reentry. Just not quite enough.

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* Happens in ''TheAdventuresOfDoctorMcNinja'', where the titular Doctor, clad in a spacesuit, is riding a Dracula-imitation robot (with laser eyes) into Earth's atmosphere, after having jumped ''from'' the ''real'' Dracula's moon base using a technique taught to him by Bruce Lee. Yeah.

* Can happen in {{Orbiter}}. Some ships are actually destroyed if you screw up re-entry.

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* Averted. [[http://urgentcomm.com/mag/radio_shuttle_blackout_myth/ It used to be like this, but they've fixed the problem.]]
** The trick being to send the radio waves ''up'', since the communications aren't blocked in that direction. A satellite picks the signal and retransmits it to ground.

** In 2006, 20 years after the film, the RealLife Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter successfully used Aerobraking in the Martian atmosphere to bleed off some of its speed. It didn't do the harsh heat-shield-needing aerobraking that the ''Leonov'' did in the movie, however; it used conventional rockets to brake from interplanetary speed into a highly elliptical Martian orbit, then grazed Mars' outer atmosphere on three successive orbits to lower its apoapsis altitude (the far part of the ellipse).

* In ''TheRightStuff'', John Glenn is bringing home the Friendship 7 capsule. There was concern that his heat shield had failed and that his craft would burn up on re-entry. In the movie he hums "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" during this stressful time, but he didn't in RealLife.

* In ''[=~2010: The Year We Make Contact~=]'', the technique of "aerobraking" is used to slow down spacecraft approaching Jupiter at high speeds -- they enter the outer atmosphere, which acts as a brake and bleeds off sufficient velocity for them to enter orbit. Although the ships in question are designed precisely to do this, the tension is played up, as a very slight miscalculation would indeed end up in fiery death or the ship "missing" its orbit and flying out into space, lost forever.

* Soyuz TMA-10 and TMA-11 both suffered from a "ballistic re-entry", an entry trajectory steeper than normal, exposing the crew to high G forces and a very rough ride. Both incidents had a happy income and the crews were recovered none the worse for wear.

See also ComingInHot. Often followed by YouHadUsWorriedThere.

!!Examples

The process of atmospheric entry can be compared to hitting treacle after a ride across ice (or, if you're American, suddenly hitting a wall of peanut butter during an easy downhill jog). A fast-moving object compresses air before it, generating a lot of heat in the process. In fact, there are not many substances that can withstand the heat generated, and most spacecraft have an ablative heat shield that burns off during re-entry, which requires the spacecraft to come in at a fairly precise angle.