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LudwigPastorius

(14,383 posts)

6. NASA is using a material that was created for the Apollo missions, Avcoat.

Reply to fujiyamasan (Reply #3)

Wed Feb 4, 2026, 02:20 AM

Wednesday

The blocks of material are designed to give you controlled ablation as they heat up, meaning a more-or-less uniform degradation over the whole shield.

Instead, on the Artemis I flight, they got spalling that caused big gouges in the material. Here's a zoomable photo.

https: //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Artemis_I_Orion_heat_shield.jpg

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Good good good...SOMEBODY over there remembers what it is to kill an astronaut crew in a screw-up. Volaris Wednesday #1

There are serious problems with the heat shield on the Orion crew module they are using. LudwigPastorius Wednesday #2

Same issue as the shuttle? fujiyamasan Wednesday #3

That's not what happened to Columbia VMA131Marine Wednesday #5

NASA is using a material that was created for the Apollo missions, Avcoat. LudwigPastorius Wednesday #6

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I don't understand why we're spending the $ to do this. We've already been to the moon. This seems like a huge beaglelover Wednesday #8