Heat shield

[3] Porous ceramics with high emissivity coatings (HECs) are often employed to address these three characteristics, owing to the good thermal stability of ceramics, the thermal insulation of porous materials and the good radiative cooling effects offered by HECs.

[5] Heat shields vary widely in price, but most are easy to fit, usually by stainless steel clips, high temperature tape or specially designed metal cable ties.

[7] Some aircraft at high speed, such as the Concorde and SR-71 Blackbird, must be designed considering similar, but lower, overheating to what occurs in spacecraft.

[10] NASA funded (and subsequently discontinued) a research and development program in 2001 for testing this protection system through the University of Montana.

[11][12] The European Commission funded a research project, C3HARME, under the NMP-19-2015 call of Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development in 2016 (still ongoing) for the design, development, production and testing of a new class of ultra-refractory ceramic matrix composites reinforced with silicon carbide fibers and carbon fibers suitable for applications in severe aerospace environments.

A side effect of this method of atmospheric re-entry is aerodynamic heating, which can be highly destructive to the structure of an unprotected or faulty spacecraft.

This material constitutes the thermal protection system of the nose and the front edges of the Space Shuttle and was proposed for the vehicle X-33.

[29] To withstand this temperature without damage to its body or instruments, the spacecraft uses a heat shield using a carbon-carbon ceramic with a layer of carbon foam in between.

[citation needed] Heat shields are used in metallurgical industry to protect structural steel of the building or other equipment from the high temperature of nearby liquid metal.