Heat shield technology is a critical component for re-entry and hypersonic vehicles The next generation of crew reentry vehicles being designed by NASA will require more advanced Thermal Protection System (TPS) designs than the conservative approaches currently used. While new TPS materials are under development, a key difficulty is the ability to predict and diagnose TPS materials with instrumentation capable of surviving the reentry environment
EDA's plan to pursue this technology beyond Phase-II is to develop production of flight hardware for DoD, NASA, and privately funded vehicles. Boeing has also expressed significant interest in transitioning our technology into their thermal protection systems as part of an integrated vehicle health monitoring system. As private sector space ventures continue to blossom, there will be significant opportunities for commercialization. This technology also has derivative terrestrial applications in high temperature industrial furnaces such as for cement manufacturing where temperatures in the Kiln can get up to 1450 Celsius and careful monitoring of temperature is critical. The target market for this technology is focused in re-entry vehicles but has secondary markets in any company that manufactures hypersonic vehicles as well as terrestrial applications in high power plasma processing, energy creation systems and industrial furnaces. Of particular note, the technology is of significant importance to DoD for terrestrial intercontinental hypersonic weapons systems. EDA expects to work closely with these agencies and their prime contractors to develop the fiber optic pyrometer system to provide mission critical capability.
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