Those tiles are the most versatile (pardon the pun) tiles in the history of the world of fantasy.
They can be cut with a craft knife and shaped like styrofoam, yet can be placed into an oven at 2000 degrees F and heated for 2 hours until they glow, yet can be brought out and immediately cool in seconds to be picked up by hand, yet can also be crushed as easily as a styrofoam cup.
We get shown tests on this so called stuff with a blow torch which supposedly shows up the heat glow and dissipation and yet it appears to be a different block. Almost as if it's like asbestos.
Anyway, regardless of that, we will get back to the blow torch. Is there any testing of this tile apart from the pretend shuttle launches?
What I mean is, are there any 2/3/4/5/.....etc.etc mph winds hitting this brittle tile in wind tunnels or whatever to show how strong its resistance is to surviving a cold launch and then surviving a hot re-entry at super speeds, regardless of just a simple oven heating or a mild plumbers blow torch heating?
If I was testing this shuttle tile, I would be doing this a different way so people could see the reality.
You see, those tiles are coated in a black substance (anyone know what that is?) that is obviously super heat resistant to the point of magical.
So anyway, let's move on.
If they coat a full tile and place it in a real oven for hours. An oven that we can actually see working by placing a real fire brick inside as well as the black (fully) coated shuttle bric....erm tile and see what happens when that tile is brought out and sliced in half.
What's the chances ?
Why can't anything NASA do, be done so we can see it first hand and in such a way that we have no chance to argue the point?
When these tiles were first built for the shuttle, they were super expensive. It seems that now, anyone can buy one for a small price.
Anyone that does buy one, I suggest you take it to a blacksmith's (if you know of one) and have that tile dropped into the heat for a while and let's see what state it's in when it's taken out.
The tile might be ok for a plumbers blow torch for a while but I'd be interested to see what effects would be on it in a blast furnace or something similar.