NASA tests inflatable space heat shield

This test was via sounding rocket, at a seriously suborbital speed of only 7,600 mph. I seem to recall that the Russians tested one some years ago, but that they lost it.

An inflatable heat shield is just the thing needed for space-based industries. Thirty years ago, NASA was flackin’ the notion that orbital industries would crank out crystals and drugs and microchips in zero-g, and use the Space Shuttle to take them to Earth. As it happened, manufacturing processes for all of these got a whole lot better, and the need for zero-g manufacturing evaporated. Still, with the prospect of asteroid mining and the like, the possibility exists that there might someday actually be things in orbit other than humans that would be worth more on the ground; in that case, bringing them down cheaply and reliably would the the order of the day. And a simple inflatable re-entry system, if it can be proven out, would be perhaps more reliable, and certainly vastly cheaper, than using something like the Orion capsule or a Space Shuttle.

“People” come down in style. “Stuff” takes the freight elevator.

EDIT: The idea of an inflatable heat shield is not new. The Douglas Reusable One-Stage Orbital Space Truck (ROOST) was a giant space booster design from 1962 that used a similar idea.