What is that stuff actually called? Also, is it available commercially? I don’t mean that I want one from an actual NASA spacecraft- just a prototype that I can examine at home.
They’re silica tiles and NASA still controls all the ones they’ve produced. They don’t sell them or lend them out.
Actually, you can get small samples in the NASA souvenir shop. They are very light and stand up to the blow torch test (heat with a blow torch, then touch). If they are not the real thing, NASA went to a lot of trouble to make them appear to be.
It should be noted that the Shuttle tiles are quite a different thing from the Ablative heat shields used on most reentry capsules.
We had a small cube of tile in the Ceramic Engineering department at Rutgers University. We would use it for demonstrations and such. We’d put in a small furnace at 1500 C or so, pull it out with tongs set it on the table, let the folks see that it was glowing, then pick it up bare-handed by the corners. Very impressive stuff.