Comparison of thermal protection systems for a space shuttle booster and orbiter.

Selection of the most appropriate thermal protection system design approaches requires evaluation of alternate concepts. Such an evaluation was conducted for a representative booster and orbiter configurations. TPS concept examined for the booster included heat sink, metallic reradiative, reusable surface insulation, and surface cooled types. For the orbiter, emphasis was placed on metallic reradiative and reusable surface insulation concepts with uncooled, phase change material cooled, and water-cooled substructures. Three insulation materials of different densities were examined for the orbiter reradiative TPS to identify the weight sensitivity of various substructural design approaches to this variable.