In article ,
(Joseph Nebus) wrote:

Jack Linthicum writes:

On Apr 8, 6:56=A0pm, Pat Flannery wrote:

They did use a ablative heatshield on the X-23A Prime unmanned lifting
body RV with good results:http://www.astronautix.com/craft/prime.htm

One in three flights could be considered successful, ie not a lost
aircraft. Not a standard to convince someone to crawl into one of
those.

But it doesn't appear, from a very quick reading of this, that
the failures were particularly related to the ablative heat shield.
That doesn't speak well for the X-23A as something I'd want to ride,

Both failures were related to parachute faulty deployment or disconnect,
rather than any controllability problem, so I don't see a problem, at
least in principle.

but it does offer evidence that an ablative heat shield on flight-
controlling surfaces isn't by itself a bad idea.