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The Space Shuttle
Anyone who has ever watched the space shuttle land knows that it's not really flying, but it's simply gliding through the air.
As the shuttle enters the atmosphere,
it's moving fast and it begins to rub against the air, which helps to slow it down for landing.
Under normal conditions, friction between the bottom of the orbiter and the air would cause it to heat up so much that the shuttle would burn up like a meteor! To prevent this from happening, NASA engineers had to come up with a way of protecting the shuttle upon re-entry. Their solution was to line the entire bottom of the orbiter with hundreds of specially designed heat-resistant tiles, which protect the craft when it lands.
