Thermal protection systems (TPS) and hot structures are required for a range of hypersonic vehicles ranging from ballistic reentry to hypersonic cruise vehicles, both within Earth’s atmosphere and non-Earth atmospheres. The focus of this presentation is on air breathing hypersonic vehicles in the Earth’s atmosphere. This includes single-stage to orbit (SSTO) and two-stage to orbit (TSTO) accelerators, access to space vehicles, and hypersonic cruise vehicles. The presentation will include a brief discussion of aerodynamic heating and thermal management techniques to address the high heating, followed by an overview of TPS for rocket-launched and air-breathing vehicles. The argument is presented that as we move from rocket-based vehicles to air-breathing vehicles, we need to move away from the “insulated airplane’ approach used on the Space Shuttle Orbiter to a wide range of TPS and hot structure approaches. The primary portion of this talk will discuss issues and design options for CMC based TPS and hot structure components, including leading edges, acreage TPS, and control surfaces. The current state-of-the-art will be briefly discussed for some of the components. Environmental durability and technical challenges impacting the use of CMC TPS and hot structures for hypersonic vehicles will be discussed briefly.