We all know how valuable heat shields are while making re-entries into Earth's atmosphere, the Columbia space shuttle disaster stands as testimony for the importance of such hardware, as a hole only about 30 centimeters in diameter brought down a 3.6 ton behemoth of a spacecraft, killing seven in the process. In fact, the heat shields of the U.S. space shuttles are rather weak in comparison with those of the new Orion space capsules which will be used in NASA' Project Constellation.
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