Starship· guided tour

Heat Shield Tiles

the black tiles

About eighteen thousand black hexagon tiles cover the side of the ship that faces forward during re-entry, and they can take searing heat without the metal underneath even warming up much.

How many

~18,000

Shape

Hexagons

Withstands

1,400°C

How it works

Coming back through the air gets so hot it would melt bare steel. The tiles soak up and radiate away that heat, the same basic idea as the Space Shuttle’s tiles, but shaped as hexagons so they tile a curved surface with almost no gaps.

For the grown-up

Silica-based tiles, black to help radiate heat away, covering only the windward face rather than the whole vehicle. Rapid inspection and swap-out between flights, rather than the Shuttle’s labour-intensive per-tile refurbishment, is the explicit design goal.

SpaceX Starship