Why aren’t heat shield tiles on rockets and space shhuttles white since white paint reflects heat better?
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Painting them white wouldn’t really help, they’d be unpainted in seconds
The tiles on the heatshields aren’t trying to reflect heat, there’s too much heat for that to be feasible, they’re trying to insulate. They’re a thick block of material that doesn’t conduct heat well so the side facing downwards during reentry gets stupid hot but it takes soooo long for the heat to move through the tile that its through the atmosphere before the shuttle/capsule itself can get damaged.
The blunt shape of the heatshield also helps as it generates a little cushion of air between the shield and the stupid hot compressed air right in front of it.
You’re not going to develop a paint that can withstand 20 seconds at 1600C so painting it ends up being a bad idea as that paint will quickly vaporize and turn into hot gas right up against your tile rather than a safe distance in front of it and would start to eat into it.
There aren’t really any ways to cheat reentry, you just have to tank your way through it
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