With Starship, SpaceX encounters an obstacle that haunted NASA’s space shuttles

Summary

"We were interested in looking at the more durable systems," Camarda told Ars. "The first thing I ever tested was actually an all-metallic shuttle wing leading edge, and it used heat pipes, and it was built by McDonnell Douglas. It was a competitor with the reinforced carbon-carbon, the passive leading edge system." Ultimately, NASA went with the reinforced carbon-carbon heat shield for the leading edges of the shuttle's wings and nose cap, while the belly of the shuttle was shielded by ceramic tiles. It was one of these reinforced carbon-carbon panels that broke on the space shuttle Columbia when it was hit by a piece of foam from the shuttle's external fuel tank during launch in January 2003. The damage was undetected until the shuttle broke apart during reentry 16 days later, killing all seven astronauts onboard. Camarda flew as a mission specialist on the next shuttle flight in 2005 after NASA developed techniques to repair a damaged heat shield in space. "I did a lot of very early on radiant heating tests and hypersonic wind tunnel tests of this all-metallic wing leading edge, and it would basically take the heat from the lower surface and basically pump it up to the upper surface, so the entire wing leading edge would glow almost at the same temperature because it was such an effective two-phase heat transfer," Camarda said. Camarda's work in the thermal structures branch at NASA's Langley Research Center was limited to ground testing in high-temperature wind tunnels. His designs never flew on the space shuttle. "When I saw [SpaceX] was testing different kinds of metallic heat shields, the guys... in my old branch, were all saying, 'Wow, this is phenomenal! We wish we were young again and NASA was this vivacious, you know?' But unfortunately, we didn't get to see it." Camarda said NASA's approach to testing is a lot different from the way SpaceX handles things. NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson, STS-135 commander, right, and pilot Doug Hurley, left, examine the th...