wdunwoody and we didn’t solve the heat shield problems in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle programs?
The Artemis heat shield uses the same ablative material that was used in the Apollo program, but in blocks now:
From: https://www.leonarddavid.com/artemis-ii-orion-heat-shield-issues-decision-forthcoming/
Root cause
But in a post-flight analysis of the Artemis 1 heat shield, NASA identified more than 100 locations where ablative thermal protective material was liberated during its speedy reentry. …
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Avcoat changes
The heat shield features the same ablative material called Avcoat used in Apollo lunar outings and return-to-Earth missions. However, the building process has changed, according to Lockheed Martin that fashioned Orion’s thermal protection system.
“Instead of having workers fill 300,000 honeycomb cells one by one with ablative material, then heat-cure the material and machine it to the proper shape, the team now manufactures Avcoat blocks – just fewer than 200 – that are pre-machined to fit into their positions and bonded in place on the heat shield’s carbon fiber skin,” the aerospace firm’s website explains. That process is a timesaver in putting on the Avcoat – about a quarter of the time. ….