[Publius6961]

There's a period during re-entry where the ionization caused by the ship plowing through the upper atmosphere at thousands of mph causes radio transmissions to be disrupted.

Things have progressed tremendously since the 70s.
I suspect that a hardened recorder will be incorporated in future flights that will have ablation protection and is recoverable, that will record all the important parameters during those 15-20 minutes.
Modern solid state memory makes this very easy to do.

[Moose4]

A self-contained hardened recorder would be nice. But is it even feasible to make one that can survive something like this--breakup of the vehicle at 12,000 mph and 207,000 feet, the G-forces involved in deceleration, the heat of re-entry, and then that sudden stop at the bottom as it hits the ground?

If anybody can do it, our scientists and engineers can, I guess.

}:-)4