#x 15

No that's not how it works and the fact that you dug up a six year old post on my blog tells me you have nothing better to do than start shit with people and would simply put your fingers in your ears and yell LALALALALALA if I tried to flatten you with the actual physics.

Things don't just burn up on re-entry, modern supersonic aircraft ALSO heat up due to ram pressure in flight, to the point where the X-15 - with a skin made of ICONEL (a nickel-chromium alloy) which is a superb heatsink, fucking started MELTING in flight. Concord had problems with heat from ram air. The Blackbird leaks fuel like a sieve because it's components were made too small on purpose to account for thermal expansion due to - you fuckin guessed it - ram air.

See in physics gases do this funny thing when compressed and heat up. No heat is added, so much as the heat energy in a given volume of gas is now forced into a smaller space and thus the temperature rises. Compress it enough, like when you're forcing something through the upper atmosphere at 4,520mph or coming back down from orbit at 17,500mph or more, the pressure put on atmospheric gases causes them to heat up, and that heat is absorbed by the object.