“Metal tiles… don’t work very well,” he said. “They oxidize very well in high oxygen environments. [space] Shuttle external tank The color, perhaps a tribute to the shuttle program, was created by three small metal tiles on the top. ”
Gerstenmaier has the ability to interpret complex technical concepts in a digestible way. His career began with an aerospace engineer working on the shuttle program at NASA in 1977. He rose in NASA’s ranks, becoming the head of the agency’s all human space flight programs, before joining SpaceX in 2020.
Experiments using metal tiles symbolize the way SpaceX develops the spacecraft. The company’s engineers acted quickly to make changes and integrated the new design into each test flight. Metal insulation panel tiles are not a new technology. NASA They were tested in the lab in the 1970s But never flew past them.
“I think we learned a lot by sending them to the flight, and we’re still protected underneath enough that it’s not causing problems,” Gerstenmeier said. “In most tiles, there’s a considerable gap, and that’s where we see the heat pass and beneath.”
Mastering the Starship’s heat shield is crucial to the future of the program. The heat shield must be durable to enable the Starship to be reused quickly. Musk’s eyes stretched out of the spacecraft within 24 hours.
NASA’s reusable shuttle uses about 24,000 exquisite ceramic tiles to protect them from the hottest reentry temperatures, but these materials are vulnerable to damage and require manual renovation and touch. SpaceX’s Dragon Crew capsules have a reusable structure that is the basis of the heat shield, but the insulation panel material itself is only used once.
For Starship, SpaceX requires a heat shield that will meet the stringency of space flight—easy vibrations during launch, extreme thermal cycles in space, agile re-entry heat, and crushing of the capture arm at the end of each mission. Musk called the ship’s reusable heat shield the “largest” engineering challenge for the Starship program.
Continuing his speech, Gerstenmaier pointed to a piece of white near the top of the Starship heat shield. He said this is due to the heat oozing between the gaps in the tiles and eroding the base material, which is a thermal barrier derived from the heat shield on the Spacex Dragon spacecraft. The technicians also intend to remove some ceramic tiles near the starship’s nose to test the vehicle’s reaction.
“It’s essentially a white material sitting on a dragon, and it disappears and when it melts, it creates this white residue,” Gerstenmaier said. “So, it shows that our heat is essentially that goes into that area between the tiles, into the underside of the tiles, and this ablated structure then melts underneath. So we learn that we need to seal the tiles.”
The main structure of the spacecraft is made of special stainless steel alloy. Most other spacecraft that reenters, such as the shuttle and dragon, are made of aluminum. The higher melting point of steel makes it easier for Starships to forgive heat shield damage than space shuttles.
