Thermal Protection System Facility

We've seen the miracle of shuttle tile insulation systems before, even the ability for edge heat to be shed very, very quickly while the core holds the heat amazingly well.

Here we get a more impressive and confident demonstration of that at about 2:14.

The quote at 3:40 says, "it has very, very low specific heat and very low conductivity." That phrasing alone is worth the price of admission and watching the lower-quality video and audio of the first 2/3 this video.

At 4:12, then, we get, "it's a little counter-intuitive, but it sheds heat really quickly from the outside, but it's insulating, so it holds heat in."

Later in the video we get a demonstration of the ceramic's ability to absorb huge amounts of water due to its "microporosity"

It's not necessarily a flashy video, but it's very nice at explaining what makes this material so brilliantly special.