Jeff Findley wrote on Fri, 22 Mar 2019
06:24:34 -0400:


There was some whining online about "why didn't they save that tooling
in case the stainless steel didn't work out". Um, because they've done
the analysis and testing on the hexagonal tiles needed for the new
design and they passed the tests.


Personally I'm still concerned about the transpiration heat shield.
Lots of people in the past have wanted to do similar things and none
of them could make it work. It's not a very fault tolerant approach.
I'd be a lot more comfortable if they'd build a subscale article and
loop it around the Moon so it returns at interplanetary reentry
speeds. Even more comfortable if they could somehow expose it to a
bunch of dust and crap (like by a lunar landing) and then bring it
back.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw