SpaceX’s lesson from last Starship flight? “We need to seal the tiles.” - SpaceX’s lesson from last Starship flight? “We need to seal the tiles.”
"We were essentially doing a test to see if we could get by with non-ceramic tiles, so we put three metal tiles on the side of the ship to see if they would provide adequate heat control, because they would be simpler to manufacture and more durable than the ceramic tiles. It turns out they're not," Gerstenmaier (spaceX VP) said.
"The metal tiles... didn't work so well," he said. "They oxidized extremely nice in the high oxygen environment. So, that nice orange color, kind of like a [space] shuttle external tank color, maybe paying homage to the shuttle program, was created by those three little metal tiles up on top."
"We were essentially doing a test to see if we could get by with non-ceramic tiles, so we put three metal tiles on the side of the ship to see if they would provide adequate heat control, because they would be simpler to manufacture and more durable than the ceramic tiles. It turns out they're not," Gerstenmaier (spaceX VP) said.
"The metal tiles... didn't work so well," he said. "They oxidized extremely nice in the high oxygen environment. So, that nice orange color, kind of like a [space] shuttle external tank color, maybe paying homage to the shuttle program, was created by those three little metal tiles up on top."
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