Reduction of acoustic loads of space launch vehicles can be achieved by acoustic absorbers satisfying strict cleanness requirements. This limited the use of general porous materials and requires non-porous sound absorbers. Micro-perforated panel absorbers(MPPA) is one of promising sound absorbers satisfying the cleanness requirement for launch vehicles. However, its applicability was limited to low sound pressure levels according to the acoustic impedance model of micro-perforated panels. In this paper the applicability of micro-perforated panel absorbers at high incident sound pressure was investigated in experimental ways. The absorption characteristics of a micro-perforated panel absorber was simulated according to its design variables, e.g., minute hole diameters and aperture ratios. It was shown that optimal design can be readily done by using proposed design charts. Experiments were conducted to measure acoustic properties of the designed micro-perforated panel absorbers. The results showed that acoustic resistance increases rapidly as incident sound pressure level does but change of acoustic reactance can be neglected in a practical point of view. This caused the decrease of peak value of absorption coefficient at high incident sound pressure level, but the amount of reduction can be accepted in practice. The major advantage of the micro-perforated panel absorber(wide absorption bandwidth) was still kept at high sound pressure level.