Why Do Starship's Heat Tiles Keep Falling Off?
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- Post by Dr. Scott Walter describing why the Starship heat tiles may be falling off:
We learned a lot from examining the half dozen intact tiles that Nick was able to retrieve.
TL;DR: the attachment process is likely flawed, and not the tiles themselves. Here is why.
Nick recovered many fully intact tiles on the beach within days of the launch. He also found some shattered tiles, but those tiles had be run over by cars or trodden by horses on the beach. So it is not clear whether the tiles broke apart on the orbiter during launch, or later after impacting the water or when washed ashore.
Each tile is affixed to the orbiter with three fastener pins. These pins are welded to the orbiter skin, and not likely to easily break off. The suspicion has always been that where the pins affix to the tiles is the weak point. When under load either the tiles fracture, or the anchors rip out, as if in drywall.
But that does not seem to be the case. The image of the back of the intact tile shows the anchors neatly in place with no signs of damage.
Because the tiles were discovered so soon and so close to the launch site, they were likely shook loose from the vibrations of launch, or soon after from aerodynamic loading. If they were fragile, then they should have shattered, or the anchors torn loose. Apparently, they did not. Even after impacting the water (yes they are light, so likely floated down at low velocity), and being roiled in the surf.
If the fastener pins dislodged from the skin, then one would expect to see them still attached to the tiles. They are not. Plus if loading is enough to rip the pin welds off the orbiter, the tiles should have shown damage or the anchors failed ahead of that. Only intensive vibrations could account for that possibility. Not aerodynamic loads.
Mostly likely, where the fasteners clip onto the tiles is unclipping. Why is a mystery. We all know a clip fastener is nearly impossible to remove, and special tools and tricks are needed to unclip. And that's if a clip is even designed to unclip. These clips are likely design to be one-way. They go on, but you can't unclip them.
Could there be some strange vibrational mode that allows the clips to dislodge? Maybe. We know bolts untighten when under vibration, and is the reason for loctite. Still this usually requires a lot of time. To happen seconds or minutes after launch is indicative of an unknown failure mode. Or the clip heads of the fasteners are failing or snapping off.
The other likelihood, is the tiles were not properly snapped on. With 18,000 tiles packed tightly together, it may be difficult to verify proper installation of every tile. It could just be a quality assurance issue. It's really hard to see back there.
Another remote possibility, is that stacking, destacking, tanking and detanking, and thermal expansion are the culprits that start to wiggle the tiles loose prior to launch. Given the multiple attachment points, all the pins would need to cooperate in the process. If one is stubborn it should require the tile to fail, rather than simply slip its bonds.
Unfortunately, we do not yet know how the tiles will perform under the stresses of re-entry. I am confident from thermal management that they will do fine. But they can't do fine if they don't remain attached. We need to see if they are too fragile to survive re-entry loading. But if they can, then the problem may only be the fastener design. If so these tiles remains a viable solution in the near term for Starship until better alternatives are explored.
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The reddish-orange stuff is silicone adhesive, not epoxy. The tile itself is composed of silicon dioxide (quartz, glass) fibers about 2 microns in diameter. A human hair is 70 microns in diameter. Those quartz fibers are chopped up in an industrial size Waring blender with distilled water, mixed with a ceramic adhesive, and cast into the desired shape of the tile (greenware). The top of the tile is coated with a black glass powder and then the tile is baked in a 2500F furnace until the ceramic adhesive is cured and the black glass glaze forms on the top (hot) side of the tile.
The diameter of the quartz fiber is selected to match the peak of the blackbody radiation spectrum at the highest operating temperature for the tile (2400F for the Shuttle, and 2600F for Starship). The tiles used on the Shuttle are called LI-900 (Lockheed Insulation-900) and has a density of 9 pounds per cubic foot (144 kg/cubic meter). The density of quartz is 2650 kg/cubic meter. So, the LI-900 tile is 144/2650 = 0.0543 (5.43%) of the density of quartz, that is, the tile is 1-0.0543 = 0.946 (94.6%) empty space.
So, the interior of the tile is a complex, random matrix of thin quartz fibers that backscatter the thermal radiation inside the tile about 500 times more efficiently that those high purity quartz fibers absorb that thermal radiation. That high-efficiency backscattering process (Mie scattering) the secret of the tile's very excellent thermal insulation properties.
The Shuttle tiles were adhesively bonded to the aluminum hull of the Orbiter using aerospace-quality silicone adhesive. Those Shuttle tiles performed exactly as designed on 133 out of 135 entry, descent and landings (EDLs) of the Space Shuttle Orbiter. The other two Shuttle launches were the last launches of Challenger (Jan 1986) and Columbia (Feb 2003). The tiles were not involved in those two disasters.
Side note: My lab spent two years (1969-70) developing and testing dozens of ceramic materials and manufacturing processes for the Shuttle tiles during the conceptual design period of that project.
Nick will eventually have enough to attempt his own re-entry 🔥
With how they keep falling off I wouldn't attempt it.... Columbia only took 1
Thanks Ellie! Your guest Scott Walter is terrific. Really appreciated the history lesson on reentry heat management!
The issue with shuttle tiles was the orbiter was on the side of the stack, not the top. It was constantly getting hit by foam coming off the ET. The issue was more tile damage vs coming off as mentioned. Columbia had a debit hit on the leading edge on the wing, not because a tile fell off. If you look closely there are is a spot in each tile where they would inject a chemical, similar to scotchguard, into them so they would not absorb water to add weight.
This discussion is great citizen science. It allows us to conclude that Starship heat tile design appears to be sound and that SpaceX may just need to improve the reliability of the installation process.
SpaceX have/had test rings on site with much more denser pattern of clips, and there are photos with steel "mockups" attached. They were much smaller than current gen. So could be that next bath of starship will sport smaller tiles. I think also that is very likely that "mockups" will be actually attached to new gen tiles with some kind of adhesive or other Methode.
Bullshit
@@LTV_inc that what I wrote? Check NasaSpaceFlight. It was few weeks ago, don't remember exactly. I think also LabPadre, WAI, and Marcus House reported that.
Of the 18 000 tiles on a ship there are a few percent that are glued. Those are on curved areas like the nose and the flaps. They are also in parts were they are unable to weld the studs used for most tiles. Those sections are where 3, 4 and 5 ring sections are welded together. The welding is not precise enough to be sure that studs welded to one section are at the correct distance from studs on the opposite one. So, they are forced to glue those last.
The thermal blankets are only under tiles using studs, not the ones they glue. Those are glued to the steel.
They tested each tile with suction cups on S28 before it launched. That is why they did not lose as many tiles on that ship. They will be even more careful with S29 I am sure.
I think losing a small number of tiles is fine. Losing batches of them would be bad.
I hope they find a way to avoid using glue as much as possible. It is unreliable. But welding studs after welding sections is not trivial, but I think it could be done. Maybe even welding all sections together THEN welding all the studs (using robots of course). Or, improving the precision by which sections are welded together to make using studs practical. Also improvements in the design of studs and of the holes in the tiles might improve the system.
But those will have to wait for the next versions of ships.
They’re so light that winds probably play a huge role in gathering them.
This has to be the most technical video I've seen from you Ellie, great work! There's nothing wrong with your other videos, they certainly provide an aspect to this stuff that the other channels don't, but it's great to see you grow and become more versatile in this space also 😃
Naturally great guests as well 😉
Send Elon some super glue. Or thumb tacks. Or safety pins or something.
My vote is clip failure. Could be the tile has a ridge the clip grabs and one or the other has the wrong shape. Or needs a silicone rubber vibration damper. Also, you look great in that pink print dress. More of that dress and more pink please. Love.
By the way, happy birthday, Ellie!
Yay... good times Ellie. I watched the unedited version.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Some points about the heat shield:
1. Originally, Starship was not supposed to need one.
2. This is not a simple heat shield. It might not have the complexity of tile shapes that the Space Shuttle did, but Starship still has *many* different shapes and thicknesses. This increases production and installation costs.
3. SpaceX is learning the same lessons that NASA did with the Space Shuttle TPS: the tiles are *not* very robust; they *will* be damaged during launch, requiring replacement -- which requires maintenance -- which drives up costs -- and means rapid reuse is not possible; tiles that fall off *will* result in heat damage to the Starship structure, requiring repair and maintenance -- and possible destruction during reentry. (The Soviet Buran shuttle on its one and only flight also had tiles missing during reentry. This caused so much damage and warping to the vehicle structure that it was unlikely ever to have flown a second time, even if the Soviet shuttle programme had not collapsed.)
19:47 No tile failed spontaneously or at all in the case of the Columbia disaster. It was a carbon-carbon leading edge broken by a chunk of tank insulation coated with ice which lead to the loss. Considering many Starship tiles would be "liberated" upon a vehicle disintegrating from either the FTS actuating or aerothermodynamic break up -- which one way or another has happened to every launched vehicle so far -- finding many on the beach does not indicate a general attachment problem exists. Only when a controlled reentry is undertaken and "holes" occur in the vehicle from EDL erosion would such be demonstrated.
Seems like they need a better way to attach the tiles
Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour switched to thermal blankets for the top part of the orbiters instead of tiles to reduce weight. Columbia and Challenger had tiles in that area making them heavier than the other 3.
Having some direct experience with the phenomenon of vibrations and harmonics in light aircraft, air frame, and engine structures, I can understand how it will take a few iterations of real flight tests to understand the difference between calculated loads on the attachment points of the heat tiles, and the actual loads in flight, with all the vibrations and structural loads traversing across the skin of the ship in waves during flight. Also, there may still be some tweaks that need to be made to the manufactured attachment parts to get them to have the correct retaining force in actual practice. It looks like some kind of a spring clip that snaps into place when the tile is installed. It may very well take a few tries to get it just right.
The problem I see with that is that the tiles are so light and weak, any spring clip incorporated in the tile would break the tile on installation. I surmise that a flexible glue, perhaps a high temperature silicone, is used to secure the tile on the pins.
Did you not see the metal inserts in the tile Ellie & the young gentleman showed to us? There are 3 metal inserts each with a rectangular hole to receive the end of the support post.@@3ducs
650°K is only 710°F. That would be well short of what is needed to be protected against during re-erntry.
Just because nasa used tiles on the shuttle doesnt make them a good idea.( The shuttle was not quickly reuseable). A large, or a few pieces, ablative shield. To be quickly replaced after landing is surely the answer.
The tiles need to snap in loosely to account for the pin's footing expanding during heat and cold cycles. Once they get re-entry heat soaked, they firm up and remain attached during the hottest part of the re-entry trajectory. Many are detaching during the wild vibrations experienced during launch. Vibration testing can work this out.
Great guests and good info on the Space Shuttle heat tiles. Good possible explanations from Dr. Walter on why and how these tiles are falling off.
FRAU MARLISA AHL SA BERLIN PRIVATE RA KO TANAN HERR E@ MUSK HANTOD NA SA MARS❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
As anyone who's strapped a load down in a pickup truck knows, you gotta slap it and say "that ain't going anywhere"
Thanks, Ellie! Loving your reporting.
Yes. You go girl. The extra time you spend doing research and cultivating relationships with guys like Dr.Scott Walter is very well spent. After the research, you do a great job of spreading the knowledge. Don't give up. Don't dump your husband !!!!
They SpaceX needs to develop heat resist foam ceramic spray so theirs nothing so separate.
Happy Birthday Day Ellie!! My mom's birthday too she would have been 81 🌹❤
Great Report!
Lots of interesting information.
Keep up the good work!
Ellie, were the pink tiles in the background just coincidence or planned? 😅
Great looking job with your eye makeup, Ellie!
The reason is this design is a total piece of garbage.
Thanks Ellie, it was great learning more about the tiles and actually getting to see some.
As an engineer I am super surprised SpaceX did not want to see the tiles. If the fasteners do attach to the tiles, I would think there would be tells (scratches) that would indicate how the pin detached and if they are glue attached, I would think the glue texture would give some indications of why the adhesion failed. Maybe the fact that they don't want to see them tells you something - that they already know why they are detaching. It is also interesting that they want time and location. Maybe what they want to know is when they fell off.
Predicting these go to magnetically actuated latches.
they want to use a better glue when fixing the tiles on..
Super Glue and baking soda - saw it on UA-cam.
Great and knowledgeable report Ellie 👍
It's not No.9 ....it says 'ok' as in inspected.
Love this coverage. I was a newb towards the tiles, now I understand a lot more.
As usual Ellies eyes are as mesmerizing as her awesome coverage of these topics :)
If they enter the exhaust plume on the way down they would get cooked pretty good. I saw some launch footage where a brite object was flying out from where the plume was blowing out after hitting the ground.
Thank you for all the work you're doing.
Im sure once they finalize the tile design mounting tiles will be an automated process where they can also detect the click for the 3 point connection during installation. Maybe even stager the pin height of the 3 pins so it’s a click, click, click process. This was the best video so far on the tiles i’ve seen and the deep dive into the process. Thank you.
The tiles on the Space Shuttle mainly suffered from debris that came off the external tank and solid rocket boosters during launch. Tiles seldom just fell off and Nasa said about 100 had to be repaired or replaced after each mission. One mission had over 700 damaged tiles though.
Nice discussion! A couple of comments: the analogy of heating on re-entry being like the heat from friction when rubbing your hands together isn't quite accurate -- most of the heating is actually from compression heating from hypersonic shock of the air in front of the surface, with the resulting heat then getting transferred to the surface of the vehicle. Also at 23:12 it mentioned that 90% of the heat is "reflected" from the black tile surface into space, which is not correct -- rather, the black surface when heated radiates the heat back into space via mostly infrared photons through the so called "black body" radiation mechanism (if you wanted to reflect photons you would instead make the surface white, or even better, reflectively shiny like mirror).
Expansion anchors? Anyway good work, Eliana happiest birthday 🎉🎂❤
Contiguous flexibility has got to be it. I keep thinking flexible sheets would be best. But once a corner came loose in that kind of flow, the whole thing would go, leaving a considerable exposed area. So they'd have to be smaller. Some sort of aerodynamic design, airfoil effect, that hugs the hull at higher speeds like F1 racecar down force? How about growing a complex fiber mesh, carpet, like a fleece jacket, that maintains a protective separating air layer but also expands and contracts? Single fibers wouldn't take the whole layer off. Reed bends. Trees fall. That's where you need your superconducting graphite threads, off the shelf purchase at Home Depot. I know what: how about treated steel that doesn't melt? Very nifty stuff. Alchemy would be good.
I used to be able to hand-wavingly say that it's because they still use glue on some of the tiles, as the glued areas are where 90% of the fallen tiles come from. But IFT3 didn't seem to have this problem, so maybe they figured out something important.
I was around for the shuttle and its heat tile woes. Man, what a frustrating problem! Decades later SpaceX still struggling to find a complete solution. It's tough because any additional mechanism you add to hold them more firmly is likely to require additional parts (cost), materials (weight), and complexity (failures). If I had some brilliant idea, I'd be happy to share it with them. But what do I know? I just do the soffwarez.
650°K = 377°C = 710°F so you're saying they would be destroyed if you put one on your stove? They can not withstand the heat of some burning wood? Then the ship is doomed.. unless you're mistaken about that temperature.
High temperature silicone adhesive can withstand over 700⁰F which the backside of the tiles should never reach. For the vibrational stresses of a launch to cause them to detach, I suspect "human error" as the primary reason. The individual "pins", AND tiles, should be cleaned and "primed" with adhesion promoter prior to the tiles being installed with the proper amount of PROPERLY applied adhesive. As long as these tiles, 18,000 of them, are installed, one at a time, by human beings, there WILL BE problems with "human error/nature". If SpaceX were to automate the process with robots, these human "induced" "mistakes" would likely be eliminated along with the associated failures. Would almost be guaranteed to be faster, too. It's also possible that the ice layer that forms on the surfaces when cryogenic propellant is loaded is pushing the tiles from behind, between the tile and stainless steel skin, with enough force to sheer the bond between tiles and pins. The vibrational forces amplify the stresses. This is likely going to be an ongoing issue since the shell of Starship IS the tank and, even with the thermal "blanket", guarantees that ice formation. Remember that very thick orange foam insulation on the Shuttle main tank? It was to prevent this ice formation and potential damage to the Shuttle from the ice breaking loose.
The tiles are just fine. They will not be on any Artemis program vehicles. Starship is being developed to land on the Moon and Mars. On the moon--- unnecessary because light gravity and no atmospheric friction to cause heating of the HLS shell. There will most likely be a form of heat absorbing coating on the bottom sides of the lunar landing engines installed high up the HLS vehicles.
As for Mars--- the atmosphere is 1/100 the density of Earth's atmosphere and these existing tiles and adhesives will be fine, and with the same type of landing engines mounted high up to mitigate a dust cloud that will interfere with sensors needed to accurately and softly land on Mars soil will need a thermal coating under the engine nozzles, not necessarily tiles glued into place (knowing Elon it will be an innovative Tantalum Hafnium Carbide based refractory coating that reflects temps up to 7,600F)
Thank u Ellie for another informative video. Now here r a couple of 'dumb?' questions-Has SpaceX experimented with making a blanket to fit over large areas of the Starship- Or dipping the Starship into some kind of tile bath??
It's been a problem for decades, you'd think they'd have that one thing fixed by now....
If the pins are the why not design a new pin ?? Seems simple to me...??!!
Thanks Ellie !! Great show... As always... !!
Nice job Ellie 🥰😘😘
Isn’t the white handwritten text on the black side actually saying, “OK” with an underline? I understand that was added to tiles after successful insitu testing. I think I heard that in a NASASpaceflight video.
Yeah, but why do the heat tiles keep coming off?
It's probably the attachment method but we're talking about spacex engineers who would have no trouble designing a no-fail method for fixing two objects together, so what's the problem yeah?
Obviously there is something problematic with attaching a necessarily delicate part to the ship. The tiles need to move to handle thermal deviation and can't be too close to each other or they breach each other but also not have too large a gap to let in heat. It seems a catch 22 problem.
No one can figure out a way to fix a brittle tile (from the outside) that creates a heat seal and at the same time accommodate shift and vibration etc. They are attached with steel pins, so why do the heat tiles keep coming off Dr Scott Walter? How would you do it?
If there was a way you could attach these things and know for sure they wouldn't, couldn't ever come off ie the ship more likely to RUD than losing its heat seal that would be very nice thank you very much
SpaceX not demanding the tiles be returned is a very good move.
If people know that giving information to SpaceX would lead to confiscation of their souvenir, they would lose a potentially valuable source of information.
Thank you for what you do. Keep up the great work
It is possible that your friend Nick may have tiles from across all 3 launches, and those serials might help Space X identify which Starship and placement location on the Starship it was from.
The large amount of debris found recently may be a combination from all 3 launches, (think like the plastic ocean patch floating around the ocean) more of the launch debris being washed on shore from the recent storms shortly after the last launch, more in line with DR Scott Walter's suggestion was addressing to the amount of debris out there and the close spacing of the finds so short after the recent launch
Could SpaceX create mats of tiles by weaving heat shield tiles to adjacent tiles? Once mats of manageable size are made, they could be woven to adjacent tile mats until the required area of the Starship is covered. The fiber used to weave the tiles to each other would also be woven to attachment points on the skin of the Starship.
Also, why are those complicated fore and aft flaps needed? Could they get as good or better performance with a pair of fore and aft scissor wings that deploy from the untiled dorsal surface of the Starship? They would deploy prior to reentry and then redeploy prior to the powered portion of the Starship's descent. A larger, more centrally mounted scissor mono-wing might work even better than two smaller fore and aft scissor wings.
Interesting video. I hope these tiles will be returned to the rightful owner namely SpaceX, the might use them for analysis and investigation? I am sure the Chinese have figured it out, "how not to attach heat tiles", after watching this video…;)
It's not friction it's pressure don't forget you're hitting this atmosphere at 27000KM/Hour!
I believe the problem is that they are trying to form the tiles to fit the ship instead of forming the surface of the ship to form to the tiles. There is NO reason the metal surface where the tiles are mounted has to be a smooth surface. There are shapes they can use that won't break the tile with expansion and contraction. I believe once they realize mounting them to a flat surface with pins is not the answer i think they will change the design.
For example where the metal pins are, if the pin locations also had a rounded recess and the tile will also have a rounded protrusion to fit in that recess where the pin mounts are. The round shape will allow the tiles to still expand and contract as needed and give it extra structural integrity.
so sad dealing with a 1980s issue. ill fix it for $5k.....YAWN
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d look first at what happens if the clips are chilled to very low temperatures due to the temperature in the tanks, but the tiles remain at near ambient temperature due to low thermal conductivity. That might result in a condition where some clips can loosen. Just my completely uninformed speculation.
Couldn't you create some kind of surface mounted tile locking mechanism, based off some kind of kid's toy, such as Lego, or something similar, to enable the tiles to remain locked in place?
no locking system under and metal expanding...
The issue with the tiles falling off.
Is a result of smooth attachment pins instead of ribbed locking pins. Tiles being attached are pushed on to the pins for attachment to starship. But under maximum harmonic vibration through the pins the attachment clips in the tiles will stay open and have a tendency of sliding off smooth pins due to air pressure and vibrations. They're real easy solutions
they need to do an x-ray with a vision system (doesn't even need to be AI) that compares every attachment point against a good picture. The image difference will point out where the failures are.
Nick is an exact cross between Elijah Wood and my cousin Johnny.
Develop and incorporate steel velcro washers around the pins. A simple straight wire with barbs rather than hooks and for the base you could incorporate fine wire into the felt layer for the barbs to latch onto, assuming that felt layer is also held down by a one way washer on the pins. Hell, just let me at it. I'll fix it.
11:36 “friction “ lol 😂that’s not the reason. it’s act air compression 😮😮😮😮same as why a hand pump heats up.
the shuttle tiles were attached to the airframe, starship tiles are attached directly to the fuel tanks ... heat, cold, expansion, contraction, flexing...
steel cable ties
Roof shingles - Scales ---- tiles should be installed like roof tiles with overlaps.
Because they are trying to glue them on with Muskrat Poop. Muskrat the psychoptah loves it because he hopes a falling tile will kill someone.
I've had the question of why these tiles aren't interlocking. They would benefit from the strength of adhesion from neighboring tiles to hold in place. I understand there are other factors involved in the overall decision as to how they are mounted but I would think even a small plate adhered to the bottom of a tile or a lip manufactured into a tile that catches under an adjacent tile would help with overall strength and stability
I wonder who pays more for the tile. Space X when making them or us space nerds when buying them online 😂😂
Why can't you just screw them on so tight so that they do not get loose and come off? If you loose tiles by the bucketful can that vehicle function properly? Isn't even a single heat tile loss enough to potentially doom the vehicle?
SpaceX looked at micro-holes all over the stainless steel sweating fuel to cool the heat and perhaps produce a plasma shield effect.
There are large areas that are empty space and not fuel tanks, a problem even if did work.
I wish They would develop a probe That can go in the ocean and in outspace. People want information and learningg how to develp those in a small form. It needs to be more a swarm is my speculation
The heat of reentry is not due to friction with the air. It is generated by hyper velocity compression. This is the same phenomenon that ignites the fuel in a diesel engine. At hyper velocity the air cannot be displaced fast enoug and ends up being compressed along the frontal area.
Each launch so far has lost significantly less tiles so the improvements implemented so far are a big improvement though still not quite there.
aren't they still spaceX's property? If I dropped my wallet it doesn't become finders keepers in law
Do they use any heat shielding on the reusable protective second stage covers that Space X recovers from the other rockets . These recoverable covers might make a good test bed for different tile designs even if they aren’t necessarily meant for these covers .
Hey it might seem like it is something now? But the way those things fall off it won't be long there will be plenty for everybody.
need a material engineer. What chemical make up is possible that takes the temp differential Like Aluminum heat sinks but need it to be as light as possible. Also a robot fastener would be ideal
From my tiles, I see pulling damage from the clip. Maybe good idea to use the bonding glue as well
The Starship is not a solid cylinder but a flexible tube with multiple vibrational modes. Under heavy loading, first from 33 blasting rocket engines, and then from six additional blasting rocket engines, various of these modes may be excited, causing the surface under the attached tiles to rapidly deform. The vibrational accelerations and forces may be high enough to loosen some of the tiles and cause some to fall off. I'm sure that each successive test will provide more data to help the engineers identify and correct the problems.
Harmonics and standing waves on the skin of Starship from the launch at a fixed point on the pad and then the waves evolve some during the ascent due to changing distance to the ground and the reflections of.
In the footage, re-entry over the Indian Ocean I saw one of the tiles fall off Check the video carefully.
I think the writing on the black side of the tiles is "ok" rather than "09". You see this written on the tiles after they have been checked and deemed ok.
Heat tiles are cool 😎. Heat tiles are hot! 🔥 Two different sentences with the exact same meaning !😊
you should talk to sx so they can know which one came off early on launch.maybe a important peace of the reason for star ships desturtion
I would wrap a foil around the Starship preventing tiles from fallen apart. While reentering the foil would melt and all tiles are still at their place.
Because they are stuck on by a "Chappie" ask Elon what is a Chappie, he will know!
This system looks cool, but its not doing well...
Wants a better system.
one last question what type of power souce would be needed to create a magnetic shield that goes to the side of starship. Just wondering if we can overcome heat
I believe the shuttle black tiles don't "reflect" the heat, they efficiently radiate the heat that has been convected to their surface by the high speed air.
They fell off the shuttle all the time. Adhesion is always the problem.