On July  24th, 1969, President Nixon on the USS Hornet personally welcomes home the Apollo astronauts

When John F. Kennedy committed the United States to sending a man to the moon, the technology to execute that mission did not exist.  One of the missing pieces was how to safely navigate the  command module and astronauts back into Earth’s atmosphere while travelling in excess of 17,000 mph, at 3,000 °F without burning up.  That was the AvCarb mission.

After years of development effort and countless trials, AvCarb engineers came up with an ablative heat shield material that could be applied to the bottom of each Apollo reentry vehicle.  This innovative material was designed to ablate, or burn off, at a precise rate to protect the capsule and astronauts from the extreme external temperatures.  This team of patriotic AvCarb engineers is shown in the photo below, next to one of the actual Apollo command modules.