A much more substantive article: http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/11/05/engineers-recommend-changes-to-orion-heat-shield/ http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/11/05/en

A much more substantive article: http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/11/05/engineers-recommend-changes-to-orion-heat-shield/ http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/11/05/engineers-recommend-cha... The Orion heat shield’s titanium skeleton and carbon fiber skin was fabricated by Lockheed Martin — the craft’s prime contractor — in Colorado. The skeleton was shipped to Textron Defense Systems in Massachusetts for installation of a fiberglass-phenolic honeycomb structure. More than 330,000 individual cells make up the honeycomb, and Textron technicians — using a special dispensing gun — filled the cells by hand with a material called Avcoat. The Avcoat insulation is supposed to ablate away during the Orion spacecraft’s re-entry, protecting the underlying structure from searing temperatures. The Apollo moon capsule used the same type of manually-applied material for its heat shield, and it worked so well Lockheed Martin and NASA decided to dust off the design. But a review of the heat shield on the Orion spacecraft set for launch Dec. 4 revealed the Avcoat was slightly more uneven than expected, according to Jim Bray, crew module director at Lockheed Martin, Orion’s prime contractor.