Conspiracy theorists have one big question after comparing Blue Origin rocket to SpaceX Falcon on return from space

If there's one thing you can say about conspiracy theorists it's that they're a damn persistent bunch.

First they cooked up the conspiracy that Katy Perry going into space was actually all done with special effects and faked by Hollywood, quite why they'd mock up sending six women into space for a few minutes is anyone's guess but conspiracies don't have to make any sense.

Then they decided that the capsule door being opened a couple of minutes before the passengers in the Blue Origin capsule emerged in front of the cameras proved it was all 'fake'.

Now there's another burning question on the minds of the people who are asking all the wrong questions and won't be satisfied until they get the answer they already wanted.

This time it's why the capsule launched from the New Shepard rocket wasn't covered in marks from being burned up on re-entry, while other spacecraft coming back down to the ground look worse for wear after a scorching experience.

The Blue Origin capsule right after landing, it doesn't look very burned up (Instagram/@blueorigin)

Here's the science-y bit, the heat from re-entry is largely caused by the air in front of a falling object getting compressed because it can't get out of the way quickly enough.

If a spacecraft is moving fast enough then it'll result in compressed air which heats up and causes re-entry burn, while the friction of the air moving past the descending craft also results in some heat.

The extreme speeds and deceleration of something like a spacecraft returning to Earth from orbit result in the major burns of re-entry.

Craft that are in orbit have to travel at thousands of miles per hour as they are still within the planet's gravitational pull and need to be moving round it fast enough to maintain their orbit.

Since Blue Origin's spacecraft basically blast off to near outer space and release a capsule which is pretty much flung to just beyond the border of outer space before coming back down, the capsule never achieved orbit and thus the speed it comes back down at is much lower.

Other capsules look significantly more worse for wear, but they have a much tougher journey than Blue Origin's brief jaunt (Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)

With a far gentler descent speed it doesn't burn up on re-entry and looked pretty much fine as it parachuted gently to the ground.

How fast you're coming back down to Earth is a major aspect of the re-entry burns, so Blue Origin getting close to space and lobbing the capsule up there before gravity brought it back down doesn't encounter this problem.

Many spacecraft protect themselves from re-entry burns with their design, with many capsules from historical space missions designed to be blunt so the hot air would dissipate.

Heat shields to take the scorching temperatures were used, and could be coated in layers of material that were designed to evaporate and take the heat with them.

So now you know something, not that it's likely to ever be particularly useful to you unless you're one day designing a spaceship and have to plan for re-entry heat.