So we all laugh at that post about how “space is cold and the sun is hot so there must be a place where space is just the right temperature”
Because yeah, that is where our planet is– Goldilocks zone and all that
Except, there’s more to it, right?
Where we are, is the ideal place for a planet to have a balmy temperature
But it’s not the place for a person just floating out in space to feel nice and warm
It’s still pretty damn cold just outside our atmosphere
If Icarus actually flew straight up from earth towards the sun, he’d get colder as he got farther from the ground. By the time he actually reached a point where his closeness to the sun was making him warmer, he and his wax wings would have been barreling through bitter cold space vacuum for a pretty damn long time
And I think that point was probably what OP was wondering about
…I’m going to argue a very nit-picky point here. (Sorry, you’ve awaken the meteorologist… it is Science Time!) Yes, and… no.
Here is the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere, from the surface through the thermosphere:
Temperature decreases with height through the troposphere, and again through the mesosphere, but increases with height through the stratosphere and thermosphere.
The temperature of the troposphere cools with height because the density of air decreases with height, and, if I am remembering my atmospheric radiation course correctly, it is also because of absorption of thermal radiation emitted from the earth’s surface.
However, perhaps contrary to what you would expect, the stratosphere warms with height, primarily due to the production of ozone. However, the maximum temperature of the stratosphere is still only about -5F / -15C, so Icarus’s wings are safe… assuming he can survive those temperatures!
If Icarus survived the trip through the stratosphere, and decided to continue to fly higher in search of the sun’s warmth, he would then go through the mesosphere, where temperatures would again decrease because the density of air decreases with height.
If he continued upward, he would reach the thermosphere. Here is where the ultraviolet and x-ray radiation begin to be absorbed by the molecules in the atmosphere, which again causes temperature to increase with height (i.e. more of the radiation is absorbed at the top than at the bottom of this layer). However, the atmosphere is so thin here, poor Icarus would feel none of the sun’s abundant warmth from the atmosphere.
But this is not about Icarus. It is about his wings. In the traditional story, his wings were made of gold feathers (iirc on a wooden frame) glued in place with wax. In order for Icarus to fall, the wax must heat up enough for the feathers to become loose. This can happen either if the wax absorbs radiation, or if the gold feathers absorb radiation and transfer the energy to the wax via conduction.
As it turns out, gold is an excellent absorber of both x-ray and ultraviolet radiation, and wax absorbs ultraviolet light (I have yet to find a scientific study about radiative absorption by beeswax, but there is this regarding gold).
So. The question then becomes, at what point does the wax reach it’s melting point?
There’s math to be done to calculate this, probably involving the area of Icarus’s wings, and total solar irradiance, but I think this is where I’m leaving this post, because it is late and my brain too fried for math at the moment.