Vertically integrated · Materials, additive manufacturing and hypersonic qualification, under one roof.
Built to fly again · Reusable thermal protection for the vehicles of the return economy.
The hardest physics problem in spaceflight happens on the way down.
A returning vehicle has minutes to shed the energy of orbital speed. Nearly all of it turns into heat in a shock layer of plasma thousands of degrees hot, and one component stands between that plasma and the payload.
The single most critical subsystem on a return vehicle.
No redundancy and no second attempt. Yet today’s shields are slow to make, mostly built for a single flight, and slow, scarce and expensive to qualify.
WHY NOW
The U.S. range capacity target for 2030, up from 178 in 2025.
Capsules, spaceplanes and cargo return, flying or in development.
U.S. commercial stations in development to follow the ISS.
Two decades of cargo return give way to many new pipelines.
THE BOTTLENECK
Shields are still largely built by hand, part by part, with long lead times.
Most capsules return on ablative shields that burn away on the way down.
Facilities that can reproduce reentry heating are few, oversubscribed and expensive.
One team owns the heat shield, from raw material to qualified part.
We formulate and characterize our own thermal protection materials, designed for reuse and tuned to each mission’s heating profile.
Additive manufacturing turns those materials straight into shield geometry, cutting cost and lead time and making small runs practical.
In-house testing qualifies every design, so the loop from material to flight-ready part runs in one place instead of someone else’s queue.
APPLICATIONS
WHERE WE’RE GOING