The question was asked:

>Do you think it would help to put a small groove along the entire leading edge of the
>wings so that it causes the plasma to swirl and radiate the heat into the cooler
>atmosphere?

There are already groves near the leading edge in the gaps between the Reenforced Carbon Carbon (RCC) tiles and the silica foam tiles. The real question is: Should the groove be bigger? The answer is no. If anything it would be best for the wing to be as smooth as possible. Remember the Shuttle has to land at subsonic speed. The last thing you want is a groove near the leading edge that can trip the boundary layer and create a stall bubble. Also creating a vortex bubble at hypersonic velocity would not be beneficial. At the beginning and end of the bubble there would be stagnant air. Energy is conserved along a stream line. The energy can either be in the form of kinetic energy (velocity squared) or heat. If you stop air into a stagnant region then all of the kinetic energy is turned into heat and that's a bad thing. Finally you want to keep the air flow over the wing laminar and not turbulent. Turbulent air is much more efficient at convecting heat to the wing's surface than laminar air. A groove can trip the boundary layer from a laminar flow to a turbulent flow.

Gary