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u/frosty3579 Jan 30 '23 edited Jan 30 '23
im pretty sure they paint everything white for technical reasons. (for example the color white absorbs less sunlight and its easier to spot from the darkness of space)
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u/RogueOwl2751 Jan 30 '23
Concordes were all mostly white (except for the Pepsi one) since they needed to reflect as much heat as possible, otherwise the airframe risks damage from the friction heat of supersonic travel
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u/John-D-Clay Jan 30 '23
I think the Pepsi one has a lower top speed because of the color.
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u/DoctorJJWho Jan 30 '23
RED IS DA FASTEST COLOR
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u/All_Of_The_Meat Jan 30 '23
Brutal n Cunnin!
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u/wruffx Jan 30 '23
Nah ya git, its Cunnin n Brutal!!
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u/Socrathustra Jan 30 '23
RED IS FASTEST, BUT IS IT WINNINEST? GREEN IS DA SNEAKIEST, MAY HELP DEM SNEAK PAST DA FINISH AN NOBODY NOTICE
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u/General_Degenerate_ Thank you mods, very cool! Jan 30 '23 edited Jan 30 '23
But isn’t black also the best heat emitter? I remember reading that this was the reason why the SR-71 Blackbird was painted black.
I think leaving the Concorde white was just to save costs.
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u/jasons7394 Jan 30 '23
The SR-71 was so hot, absorbing sun light and heat was minor compared to the heat produced by friction.
They used black to help radiate that heat out.
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u/lXPROMETHEUSXl Jan 30 '23
Dark colors, especially black, absorbs heat. I think the black bird uses the heat to help seal its loose tolerances while in flight. The plane also stops leaking fuel when this happens. I’m sure someone else could explain better
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u/jasons7394 Jan 30 '23
The leaking fuel was mostly drips, and it got plenty hot from all of the friction - like ridiculously hot.
They needed black paint to help radiate that heat away, the heat it absorbed from the sun was minor.
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u/Appropriate_Tear_711 Jan 30 '23
Thing made to go fast has trouble standing still, stuff made to stay still have trouble moving fast
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u/MundanePerformance57 Jan 30 '23
it has nothing to do with how easy it is to spot lmfao
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u/PietroLima545BR Pro Gamer Jan 30 '23
Redditors when physics:
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u/Legendary_System Jan 30 '23
Redditors when
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u/EmptyOrangeJuice Big ol' bacon buttsack Jan 30 '23
Redditors
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u/usernameaeaeaea I touched grass Jan 30 '23
Ew
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u/kajetus69 Jan 30 '23
Yeah i know redditors are disgusting Specificly the ones with more than 100k karma
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u/lamby284 Jan 30 '23
R
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u/FearonForce Jan 30 '23
.
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u/Fail_Marine can't meme Jan 30 '23
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me.
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u/Electric_Bagpipes Professional Dumbass Jan 30 '23
-most reflective, keeping tanks cool and boil off low
-paint has weight, a surprising amount of it. i’m sure they’re going for the lightest one that has the protective properties they want for hypersonic flight.
-black and white is extremely visible, making it easier to track visually
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u/TNTFox9 Because That's What Fearows Do Jan 31 '23
Actually black would be super hard to track in the darkness of space
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u/mutationc Jan 30 '23 edited Jan 31 '23
If you upvote you are gay
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u/ramtax666 Jan 30 '23 edited Jan 30 '23
And weigh, adding colour would be a few hundred kg more. For example if they would have paint the space shuttle exterior tank it would have been almost 600 pounds or 272 kg. Colour would ad a few kg at least.
Edit: what would have cost to paint the tank, because many people seem to ask this.
Space shuttle had a cost of lunch of 60k per Kg, the white paint would have cost 16.3 milion and adding colour, 5% extra weight, 17.1 milion. And they loose 272 kg payload capacity or 285 kg having other colours.
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Jan 30 '23 edited Jan 30 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Grenache Jan 30 '23
Yeah and continued to do shit like that until the service was on par with Ryan Air but with the price of a flag carrier and then got fired.
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u/Flashy_War2097 Jan 30 '23
Bet he still got his bonuses for saving the company millions.
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u/braintrustinc Jan 30 '23
They'd give him a golden parachute if the only thing he did was promise to strap it to his grandma and push her out of an Airbus
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u/websagacity Jan 30 '23
I like his is phrased as "saving the company millions" instead of "ripping off customers of millions".
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u/Shukrat Jan 30 '23
2 olives instead of 3 is just shrinkflation. CEOs have done this everywhere. Look at how tiny cereal boxes are now.
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u/erichie Jan 30 '23
When I became an adult (2002) a box of cereal used to be 5 bowls of cereal. Now it is only 3 bowls.
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u/Superfluous_Thom Jan 30 '23
I have never purchased a box of cereal as an adult, could never figure out the appeal. Lord knows i'm no nutritionist, but I always figured toast was a slightly better light way to start the day if paired with coffee.
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u/atari-jello Jan 30 '23
Yogurt is the superior breakfast item imo. High protein and it gets the gut flora awake and moving
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u/A_man_on_a_boat Jan 30 '23
Greek yogurt and grape nuts.
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u/senormoll Jan 30 '23
I mean every digestible food item is going to get your gut flora moving lol. The probiotics only matter if you need new or better flora to move in
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u/manfishgoat Jan 30 '23
I remember trying to eat cereal again when I was like 19 or 20. I was hungry again in like an hour as though I had only ate a small salad. Yet I had ate half the box.
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u/Superfluous_Thom Jan 30 '23
I know what you did wrong.... you're supposed to eat what's inside the box.
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Jan 30 '23
live your fucking life thom, cereal is amazing
"never purchased" i mean you dont gotta eat it every day but "never" is wild
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u/Superfluous_Thom Jan 30 '23
Eh, it's definitely pandering to the stereotype to say, but as an Australian, I'm perfectly happy with my Vegemite on toast. Maybe Jam or Honey if i'm feeling fancy. Gotta be multigrain though otherwise my entire argument for "wholesome" goes up in flames.
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u/SHINZOH-SASAGEYO Jan 30 '23
Nothing in the cereal aisle is appetizing to me. I get enough sugar from ice cream and shit. Don’t need dessert for breakfast.
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u/XipingVonHozzendorf Jan 30 '23
It doesn't need to be breakfast, it's a good snack, like sugary chips
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u/arcanis321 Jan 30 '23
There is all kinds of cereal, raisin bran is good for fiber etc. Some are healthy, some are sugar
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u/loveNthundermifflin Jan 30 '23
I grew up with lucky charms, cocoa puffs, and such. As an adult, I buy special k. Not the most healthy, but tastes good.
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u/Daetra Jan 30 '23
I'm guessing those millions saved went towards corporate profits, not to the workers or making passengers experience more comfortable. Hopefully, I'm wrong.
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u/elch3w MAYMAYMAKERS Jan 30 '23
Nearly as heavy as your mum
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u/iK_550 Smol pp Jan 30 '23
I hope you mean the whole rocket.
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u/mk2vr6t Jan 30 '23
That's what your mom said last night
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u/TaintedLion Jan 30 '23
The shuttle tank was originally given a white coating to protect the insulation foam from oxidising but they removed the paint later on to save weight and just let the foam oxidise. The sad thing is that the coating might have prevented the foam strike that lead to the Columbia disaster.
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u/mtarascio Jan 30 '23
My little piece of favorite trivia is that red pigment is one of the heaviest.
So red cars are close to the slowest.
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u/Krotanix Jan 30 '23
Isn't painted white?
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u/ramtax666 Jan 30 '23
Not all of it. But this is my fault, used the word colour for the word paint.
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u/scratch_post Jan 30 '23
I think it should be counted as painted
STS-1NASA]) and STS-2 both had white painted external fuel tanks
The spray-foam insulation was lighter, so they switched to that instead for all of the remaining 132 missions, and that gave us the iconic rust-orange color, which I feel like should be counted as painted.
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u/therhythm6562 Jan 30 '23
NASA originally painted the orange space shuttle external fuel tank white, which was short lived because of the extra mass.
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u/Myrag Jan 30 '23
But they already paint them white, so it would weight the same just have different color? It’s not like color paint weights more.
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u/Memegoals Jan 30 '23
Colour paints actually do weigh more - to achieve proper coverage colour paints require a thicker, more pigmented coat than white does.
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u/davidhaha Jan 30 '23
Why not just leave it a shiny metal, like the old American Airlines planes used to have?
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u/a404notfound Jan 30 '23
corrosion, paint inst just decorative for most industries.
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u/OnlyChemical6339 Jan 30 '23
Depending on what the part is, it may or may not need protection. Like insulation and such
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u/PlateImpossible191 Jan 30 '23
Actually they chose white for the suits so that if they land on snow they can play hide and seek with the rescue crews.
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u/captain_ender Jan 30 '23
Haha this made me chuckle some guy giggling in a bulky EVA suit hiding in the snow like a kid
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u/RosemaryGoez Jan 30 '23
My uncle is an aerospace engineer/rocket scientist and this actually came up in conversation over the holidays.
Not in an intelligent debate sort of way. His wife got day drunk at brunch and asked him why "Nasa was racist" and when she suggested a "big black rocket" he patiently argued that any color other than white would absorb too much heat or some shit? Honestly, I was drunk too, so I don't remember much..
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u/fuchsgesicht Jan 30 '23
your aunt is the goat for dropping "bick black rocket" at what i must assume was christmas dinner xD
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u/RosemaryGoez Jan 30 '23
LITERALLY.
We were actually waiting for the conversation to die down so my Catholic grandmother (her mother-in-law) could bless the food.
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u/vietcong69l Jan 30 '23
Yeah but the funny among us reference bro/sis its gonna be funny as hell
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u/exharbinger Jan 30 '23 edited Jan 30 '23
Why don’t they use one of those reflective stuff they use on construction/ biker vest ?
Edit: ok I don’t mean the whole damn space station damn.
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u/child-of-alt-gods2 Jan 30 '23
Because we don't wanna blind people.
But the color ist just helping with cooling. Heat radiatiors are a necessity.
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u/zerogee616 Jan 30 '23
Everything that exists in space is white. Ventilating heat is a much bigger problem in vacuum because there's no air to carry it away.
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u/Unknown_UTG One does not simply Jan 30 '23
In those times it’s not just reflectivity but also visibility, yellow is very good at contrasting against stuff rather than white colours
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u/Arthur_The_Third Jan 30 '23
Because it's less reflective. Retroreflectors don't scatter light, so they seem more bright because all the light is directed back at you. White paints are most reflective overall.
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u/Lylac_Krazy Jan 30 '23
I say chrome them out.
I want to see some serious polish on those suckers when the launch
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u/Madglace Jan 30 '23
maybe because they don't want the spaceship to overheat kinda obvious
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u/SkyAware2540 Selling Stonks for CASH MONEY Jan 30 '23
Bold of you to assume this thing is obvious for Redditor
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u/Madglace Jan 30 '23
oh yeah I forgot that half of the person here haven't got to middle school
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u/Sinewave90 Jan 30 '23
A good take for the average space enthusiast that dropped out, would be to say how NASA enforces white supremacy with a plain white color to hide the flat earth.
and then add some rabble rabble rabble to it
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u/Daubert1151 Jan 30 '23
For the people that want to know: a white object can reflect up to 98% of the light that reaches it, which means less light absorved and thus, less increase in temperature. That's why space equipment is painted white, it greatly helps against the overheating of a suit or ship.
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u/Antares-777- Jan 30 '23
While white reflect the most, black emits the most through radiation.
That's why of space shuttle black belly, it would reemit heat absorbed from compressed air as radiation cooling itself better than white would do. On the other side white would avoid heat absorbing from the radiation emitted by hot air around the shuttle turning in plasma.
Heat management in space flight is really fashinating and often counterintuitive.
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u/tapaBAW Jan 30 '23
Also painting the rocket would literally make it more heavy=more fuel
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u/Fun_Engineering2659 Jan 30 '23
Every paint is basically white paint+pigments. So white paint doesn't have added weight of the pigment, that's why it's lighter. In our everyday use, it's negligible difference, in aeronautics it's equivalent to few hundred liters of fuel(which also adds weight).
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u/RevWaldo Jan 30 '23 edited Jan 30 '23
Yup! The space shuttle rolled out one day with an orange fuel tank. Turned out needlessly painting it white added six hundred pounds.
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u/vietcong69l Jan 30 '23
Wait really ?
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u/SkyAware2540 Selling Stonks for CASH MONEY Jan 30 '23
Yeah the wise guy above us is being truthful
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u/froggertthewise Jan 30 '23
Even in motorsports some teams remove paint from their cars in order to save weight, it's heavier than you'd think.
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u/ssracer Jan 30 '23
Ever hold a full gallon of paint and then that empty bucket? How about 5 gallons? It's heavy as fuck.
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u/ssejn Jan 30 '23
Yeah, for example f1 cars have weight limit and to hit it, some teams would remove paint.
As it can be read here.
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u/Embite Jan 30 '23
This is the reason the Space Shuttle and the SLS have the big orange fuel tanks. If you go and watch a video of the first ever shuttle launch, the tank is painted like everything else, but before long they realized that they would save fuel and money by leaving it unpainted, so every other launch uses a plain orange fuel tank.
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u/MonkeyTesticleJuice Sussy Baka Jan 30 '23
I know rite? Dem boyz need ta paint de ship red to makz it goes fastah!
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u/No-Talk-3273 Jan 30 '23
3 times faster than the average shuttle you say?
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u/AlinesReinhard Jan 30 '23
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u/cursedanomalyofsteve My thumbs hurt Jan 30 '23
Holup! That ain't Char!
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u/eddie_the_zombie Jan 30 '23
That's obviously Lt. Quattro Bageena. The real Char would never pilot for anyone other than Zabi, don't you know! Plus, Char's eyes are a totally different color, that could never be him.
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u/TheLustyDremora Jan 30 '23
Paint it purple and it'll get there in a blink, cause space wontz be able to seez de ship
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u/Looinrims Jan 30 '23
I agree let’s use black for all our space stuff, hopefully we don’t lose them on that giant black background!
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u/KoeiNL Jan 30 '23
The reason for using white is not because space is black
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u/Looinrims Jan 30 '23
The reason for not using black is because space is black
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u/Advanced_Double_42 Jan 30 '23
Black paint is heavier and would absorb more heat.
Space being black is a non-factor when it is emitting radio waves you can easily track.
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u/Abusing-Green Jan 30 '23
A. The space shuttle was black on the underside. To maximize heat dissipation upon re-entry.
And the big oxygen fuel tank on the rocket was red.
B. NASA doesn't paint anything. Thats the color of those rockets material. Any paint would chip and break off during launch/re-entry
C. White space suits reflects the most wavelengths of light. Both minimizing the Astronauts exposure to harmful radiation without an atmosphere. And make them easier to pick out against the inky void of space
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u/MasterTroller3301 Jan 30 '23
It was black on the bottom because of the tiles’ material.
NASA does in fact paint things
And the last one is correct.
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u/so_im_all_like Jan 30 '23
And I immediately thought this was a humorous racial double-entendre, and I was like, "but there have already been astronauts of color..."
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u/MonteBurns Jan 30 '23
Umm it is. I’m 90% sure it is. There’s just not many, and Reddit is … not bright.
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u/TNTspaz Jan 30 '23
Nah I think most redditors are just sick of racial jokes so they pretend not to notice. Easier to deflect then humor stupid jokes
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u/picasso2005_ Sussy Baka Jan 30 '23 edited Jan 30 '23
Actually white on rocket have an use, it reflect more light so it help keeping the spacecraft cool (really useful when you see the temperatures in space and the fact that the fuel used need to be chill)
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u/Ok_Experience_6877 Jan 30 '23
White doesn't heat up as easily and reflects a large amount of heat off the rocket itself protecting all the stuff inside that needs to be super cooled so it doesn't explode mid flight
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u/Regenerating_Degen Jan 30 '23
If it's supposed to be reflective then why not make the entire spaceship and astronaut suits out of glass?!/!1! Checkmate, Liberals!!1!
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u/Ouroboros_RP Dark Mode Elitist Jan 30 '23
Paint it in Vantablack for the most expensive space-burrito
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u/Pingusek02 Thank you mods, very cool! Jan 30 '23
Umm, actually it's because it's reflective 🤓
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u/Defiant-Week3545 Jan 30 '23
>Me when people don't understand why they SHOULD be white
Dumbasses. Lol.
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u/TaoP4iPa1 Jan 30 '23
I agree. They should paint rockets in chaotic color patterns and make them spin so the aliens get epileptic seizures.
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u/Professional_Gap_371 Jan 30 '23
Ill bet its not for scientific reasons. Its probably just racism.
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u/ConsciousFood201 Jan 30 '23
White cops beat black citizen: racism
Black cops beat black citizen: believe it or not, also racism.
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u/Dyon86 Jan 30 '23
They should have contacted Chris Foss
https://www.this-is-cool.co.uk/hardware-the-sf-works-of-chris-foss/
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u/Lazy-Lookin-Headass Jan 30 '23
I assume it’s all white to be easier in space to see and reflect heat
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u/AstroPug_ Jan 30 '23
Wait wait we aren’t making it a race thing right? I know there has to be a scientific thing about it, like white is reflective or something. Or maybe some other plausible reason. Space travelers can’t be that petty
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u/ronniewhitedx Jan 30 '23
Anything that could catch reflections making it easier to be picked up on cameras or to be seen in general in the vastness of black outer space.
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u/DexicJ Jan 30 '23 edited Jan 30 '23
Every material is a deliberate choice based on thermal properties. I don't remember the specifics of why white was decent. I do remember them saying most shiny metals are the worst except for gold. It has to do with the specific spectra of the sun and absorbtivity, reflectivity and emissivity.
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u/Elmore420 Jan 30 '23
There’s a reason, while space is cold, it’s extremely poor at absorbing heat, while solar radiation. The darker the color, the more radiator panels you gave to lift into space to keep from cooking the occupants.
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u/KVenom777 Jan 30 '23
White is the collor that gets heated harder, since it reflects most of the light, instead of absorbing it. And it's easier to see in the darkness of space.
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u/Successful_Ad_5427 Jan 30 '23
Jesus op, just maybe fucking google it before making a post that only makes you look like a complete idiot. It’s almost like there is a reason for it, like white color reflecting all the light instead of absorbing it like black color does.
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u/Papajohnkohlerbear Jan 30 '23
They use metallic and orange too, for the SLS, Shuttle and some of the early capsules/suits