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Originally Posted by RobinClayton
I love this debate so far.
My vote is for the paper plane to survive "intact". One problem is that the ISS is in orbit, so anything released from ISS would also be in orbit. However if it was thrown towards Earth, then it should eventually reach the outer atmosphere. Here I think it should be slowly drifting downwards and friction would not build up sufficiently to damage the paper. The shape of the plane may start to crumble, but not until much lower altitude.
If you are able to contact ISS, then you may want a controlled experiment with several planes of different shapes and thrown in several different directions. Do we know how much paper they have on board?
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Knowing what direction to throw the plane from the ISS to de-orbit it is easy - throw it in a backwards direction to reduce its orbital energy and lower its periapsis (opposite to the direction of travel). You would have to throw the plane at a relative velocity of over 300km/h if you wanted it to re-enter on the current orbit, however a paper plane in an orbit similar to that of the ISS will de-orbit, due to atmospheric resistance, after a couple of weeks(?) anyway.
A few years ago a cosmonaut hit a 3 gram golf ball from the ISS in a direction opposite to the direction of travel. A super quick google hasn't found much detailed info but it would be interesting to see if there's any data on what happened (though I know it was too small to be tracked by radar).
I like the thinking in your latest post Alex, but I still think that there's too much heat to dissipate and, to my highly untrained mind, I don't think a paper plane is a very good radiator of heat. It's gonna burn!