User:Mdbzzzz/sandbox
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The Whipple shield or meteoroid bumper, invented by Fred Whipple,[1] is a type of hypervelocity impact shield used to protect manned and unmanned spacecraft from collisions with micrometeoroids which impact at an average speed of 26 kilometres per second (16 mi/s) in low Earth orbit and orbital debris whose impact speeds range between 3 and 18 kilometres per second (1.9 and 11.2 mi/s).
As opposed to monolithic shielding of early spacecraft, Whipple shields consist of a relatively thin outer bumper placed a certain distance off the wall of the spacecraft. This improves the shielding to spacecraft mass ratio, critical for spaceflight components, but also increases the thickness of the spacecraft walls, which is not ideal for fitting spacecraft into launch vehicle fairings. The advantage of a bumper placed at a standoff over a single thick shield is that the bumper shocks the incoming particle and cause it to fragment and melt. Furthermore, the collision with the bumper imparts a radial motion to the particle fragments which spreads the impulse from the particle/bumper fragments over a larger area of the spacecraft wall.