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Please don't cite LLMs for factual questions. They are prone to confabulation. Why not type the question "How many heat shield tiles did the Space Shuttle use?" into Google?

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b&sca_esv=11e08...

This gives a direct answer (24,300) while citing a NASA source.




Since I mentioned I got the info from ChatGPT, people can decide for themselves how much they trust it.

Note that the question here is how many uniquely shaped tiles there was, not the total number.

This is interesting because if you have to manufacture and keep in stock 17,000 separate tile shapes, that will be vastly more expensive than SpaceX who, from what I hear, only uses a singe hex shaped tile everywhere.


SpaceX uses several different shapes for the nose and areas on and around the flap.




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