Could 'Fire Paste' Replace Shuttle Tiles?

pipingguy writes "Troy Hurtubise, of bear suit fame, claims to have invented a physics-defying substance called fire paste. "I could coat the belly of the NASA space shuttle with fire paste for $25,000 (US), instead of the $60 million it costs for them to put tiles on it," Hurtubise said. "It can stand up to the heat of re-entry to the earth's atmosphere, and then they can simply wash it off.""

Comments

Re:No more accidents

[eMartin]

Somehow I don't think they would go and replace a major part of the shuttle's design and just expect it to work.

right on!

[morcheeba]

You're on the right track. The $60 million doesn't get you just shuttle heat tiles, it also gets you a warehouse full of paper documenting every single test and the certificates-of-compliance of every chemical/assembly used. Even bolts have lot numbers and are totally tracable.

I suspect they do other testing, including:

Water resistance. Not only so it doesn't wash off on rainy days, but doesn't absorb water so that freezing causes it to crack.

Free oxygen erosion. Low earth orbit exposes the leading edge of spacecraft to free oxygen (O, not the stable O2), which tends to 'rust' things quickly.

Thermal coefficient of expansion matching to the aluminium body, so it doesn't flake off. If it isn't matched, then you need a good adhesive system.

Impact resistance. Does it chip or flake? You don't want a catastrophic failure mode (a super high-speed micrometeroite should make a hole instead of shatter the whole thing)

Weight. They stopped painting the booster tank and saved a lot of weight. Current shuttle tiles are foam-like in weight.

Repairability. Do you need to resurface the whole shuttle for the slightest chip, or is it fixable?

Lastly, NASA wants a proven scientific theory of operation... something better than "It dissipates heat at an exponential rate, it's beyond belief, and I have no idea why it does, all I know is that it does." All things dissipate heat at an exponential rate - heat flow is usually related to a difference in temperatures, so as an object reaches the temperature of its surroundings, the heat flow slows down to aproach zero. That's pretty basic to understanding heat flow, and not novel.