Talk:Ablative armor

Space Shuttles
I was under the impression that the heat sheilding on NASA's Space Shuttles was based on the ablative armour concept - does this deserve a mention? --The Great Apple 16:58, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

After a small amount of poking around I may be mistaken. It could have been that earlier craft used this technique, though it appears Space Shuttles don't. --The Great Apple 17:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Early heatshields were ablative, and to date some "disposable" heatshields still are. An ablaytive heatshield on a reusable spacecraft, however, would mean having to replace it in toto after every mission. Shimgray | talk | 19:03, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

WPMilHist Assessment
A fine start, and nice mentioning the military, space, and science-fiction aspects of the topic. Could use some pictures, maybe some further details of examples in which ablative armor is used in each of these fields. Is it used at all in real-life military applications? LordAmeth 16:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation
The grammatical term ablative is normally pronounced /'æblətɪv/ (roughly ABB-lutt-tiv), but my understanding is that the armor is usualy pronounced /əb'leɪtɪv/ (roughly ubb-LATE-tiv). Is this correct? --Iustinus 17:50, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Ten years later I want to know as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.244.214.104 (talk) 14:36, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Does "ablative armour" exist?
I've marked up this article.

"It is also sometimes used as a protective material for the inside of rockets"—I couldn't find a mention of this in the article "Rocket". This statement doesn't make any sense to me without further explanation. For protection from what? What good is it for material to ablate inside a rocket, and how can this take place?

"The idea is also commonly encountered in science fiction due to the analogy with laser ablation"—what analogy? Laser ablation is destructive, and it can apply a mechanical shock to the subject. There is no explanation here, or there, that the principle of ablation offers any protection above and beyond that provided by the material itself.

The entire paragraph about "hypothetical military applications" needs a citation to show that this is not only sci-fi.

As is, the article is a fork of Heat shield. There is no real indication here that this principle is used in any military application of armour, past, present, or future, outside of fiction. Just one or two references, and a bit of clarification is all it needs to be a valid stub. —Michael Z. 2007-08-24 22:41 Z 


 * Sorry, but I feel it's necessary to demote this to a stub. —Michael Z. 2007-08-24 22:51 Z 

Introduction edit
The original basic description on this page was essentially a rewording of the description on Glossary.com (a listed source). Unfortunately, the rewording was drastically inaccurate. It stated that the purpose of ablative armor is to prevent ablative damage to itself. On the contrary: By definition, ablative armor is intended to ablate, thus preventing damage to that which it protects. If Ablative Armor prevented ablative damage to itself, it wouldn't be very good at its job!

Originally: "Ablative armor is armor designed to negate damage or destruction to itself from the process of ablation."

Changed to: "Ablative armor is armor which prevents damage by instead being destroyed itself through the process of ablation."

--- Eloquius (talk) 08:41, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 one external links on Ablative armor. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090513010633/http://www.glossary.com:80/reference.php?q=Ablative+armour to http://www.glossary.com/reference.php?q=Ablative+armour
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100614100944/http://klingonweapons.com:80/blog/2010/06/ablative-armor/ to http://klingonweapons.com/blog/2010/06/ablative-armor/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 19:57, 2 October 2016 (UTC)