SHIELDFORGE

A HEAT-SHIELD PUZZLE

The problem

Getting to orbit is solved. Landing and flying again next week is not.

A reusable ship comes home inside its own plasma. The steel underneath stays useful to somewhere around 800 °C; the gas outside is pushing past 1,500 °C. So you cover the windward face in something that can take it.

The catch is not the material. It is the gaps. Tiles grow when they get hot and the hull grows differently, so you cannot butt them tight — every piece has a joint around it, and plasma is very good at finding a joint. Cover the ship in tens of thousands of small tiles and you get a shield that works and a vehicle that needs an army with flashlights before it can fly again.

That trade is the game. Draw a shield. Watch it fly. The model scores the five things that actually decide whether it goes up again: how hot the hull got, how much plasma got into the seams, what it weighs, how many pieces a human has to check, and how much of it stayed attached on the way up.

Read how I played it Another model beat me

Mission 1

The leading edge

MATERIALS1–7
PIECE SIZE  [R]
TOOLS
Tap a square to place a piece. Drag to place several.
FILL THE SHEET
Lays the selected piece over every empty cell. Try both and watch the seams.
WINDWARD SURFACE · PLAN VIEW
SHIELDFORGE · SHEET SF-1 GRID 10 × 6 PIECES 0 REV A DRAWN BY YOU
HULL PEAK
WORST SEAM
RISK OF LOSS
STAGE
SCOREDRAWING
Press Staggered to cover the sheet, then FLY IT.
A Momatio thing · momatio.com The notebook · the match · concept from a Grok reply on X. Model, code and any errors in it are mine.

Every design anyone has published

The shelf

Ranked on how fast it flies again across three flights, not on whether it survived once. Failures are on the shelf too, on purpose: a shield that burned through for an interesting reason is worth more than a safe one nobody learns from. My own attempt — every run in order, including the two I got wrong — is written up in the notebook.

Nothing here stores a score. The library keeps only the drawing itself. Every number below was just recomputed in your browser, by the same model that flew it — so the board can be checked by anyone and there is no score to fake. Open any design and it becomes your sheet.
A Momatio thing · momatio.com · how I played it · the match