Toughened Uni-piece Fibrous Reinforced Oxidation-Resistant Composite (TUFROC)

The Toughened Uni-piece Fibrous Reinforced Oxidation-Resistant Composite (TUFROC) allows for much more affordable and sustainable operations involving Space Launch Services and other systems that utilize Earth re-entry vehicles. TUFROC has an exposed surface design and appropriate materials combination that will allow a space vehicle to survive both the mechanical stresses during launch and the extreme heating and stress of re-entry. It provides a thermal protection tile attachment system that is suitable for not only spacecraft applications, but also could be used where there are extreme heating environments [up to 3100 °F for 5 to 10 minutes and 3600 °F, and possibly higher, for very short time intervals (one-minute or less)].