Atmospheric Re-entry I'm using Blender 2.75 Cycles, I'm looking at trying to create
an atmospheric re-entry scene. 

So I'm looking for a node setup to create something like this image by using particles or some alternative method. I have attempted to use the smoke simulator but the issue is my CPU is quite slow and GPU smoke rendering doesn't seem to be supported yet.
I would model the reddish smoke as a solid object, parented with the ship, move it in it's own layer, set to a new render layer.

In the compositor you can blur it, make it transparent, add some noise texture to bring some life, mask some parts to animate it .....

Fast rendering and effective results