Posted on 10/01/2005 6:10:57 PM PDT by strategofr
Every time an astronaut gets off the ground, he or she owes a debt to the Wright brothers, not just because the boys dared to fly, but because they were smart enough to use a newfangled aluminum alloy to lighten the load of their engine and make flight possible.
The art and science of creating new, lighter and stronger metal alloys has progressed remarkably in the intervening 100 years. But many scientists now envision a looming limit to this progress owing to a mature science that will now make only incremental gains.
Then along comes Takashi Saito, a Japanese researcher who appears to have shattered the glass ceiling on metal-alloy development limitations.
Saito, of the Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories, and his colleagues have jettisoned the traditional art approach to alloy development -- the trial and error used at Kitty Hawk and everywhere since -- and turned to pure science, specifically quantum mechanics and high-powered computer computation, to create new mixtures of metal which, one outside scientist says, have spectacular properties of strength and flexibility.
In the April 17 issue of the journal Science, Saito's team writes that their titanium-based alloys exhibit "super" properties, such as ultrahigh strength and super elasticity. The new materials could prove useful for spaceflight, where precision operations are conducted in ruthless conditions.
The alloys approach "magic" upper property limits that previous methods could not attain, the scientists say.
Alloys of myriad mixings are used in various parts on satellites, deep space probes and the shuttle fleet. The new alloys could be particularly suitable for ultralightweight springs, as one example, or other "precision instruments for use in rugged environments such as in outer space," the researchers report.
To develop an alloy, researchers add one ore more so-called solute elements to a metallic solvent, such as aluminum or titanium, explains Gary Shiflet, who wrote an analysis of the new results for the journal. But there is a practically infinite number of possible atomic combinations that, in the end, result in wildly differing structural properties.
Saito's group has made "major advances in specific material properties that would be exceedingly difficult to achieve by trial and error," says Shiflet, who works in materials science and engineering at the University of Virginia.
The result, Shiflet says, is an alloy with "spectacular properties" and the promise of materials that "may have the strength to carry a load and be able to perform another distinctive capacity, such as sensing damage and perhaps even repairing themselves."
Shiflet said the discovery, and the computer work that drove it, are incentives for other researchers to concoct new metal mixtures.
See this Wired article about QuesTek's efforts in this area.
LOL! ...This is my finest work/sword. If you meet Budda, he will be cut.
Kinda sounds like the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Oh yeah, you betcha'!! I always enjoy honking my horn as I pass a bicyclist on my right at 50mph, with a foot to spare! Great fun!!
As a lapsed chemist, that seems highly improbable. That particular artificial sweetener, like most other artificial sweeteners, has a chemical structure very similar to normal food sugars and alcohols (which can also be used as sweeteners e.g. sorbitol and all those other -ol ingredients). There is nothing in its structure that would suggest any kind of overt toxicity one would normal associate with an engineered poison, certainly not in mammals at least. It does have a methanol/formaldehyde metabolic pathway that people fixate one, but far less in practice than one would get from eating fruit, and humans are well-adapted for dealing with modest quantities of methanol metabolites.
Contrary to some popular belief, many artificial sweeteners including the one in question here are not much more than engineered super-sugars. The secret is that they while they have the same caloric content per gram as your typical sugar, they are so insanely sweet that only miniscule quantities are needed rather than the heaping quantities of sugar required for equivalent sweetness. Several natural sugars are much sweeter than conventional sugar, but it is generally cheaper to design and manufacture such sweeteners since they tend to be simple molecules.
My point was things are discovered by accident at times , thanks for the take on the artifical sweetner.
Overkill on my part, eh? :-)
Aspartame is a simple dipeptide. That's 2 normal amino acids that you'd normally get by eating any protein source. The tinfoilers say all sorts of bad things about it. Discovered during rat poison developement is a new one. LOL!
LOL.....Oh no....just killed my favorite urban myth....:o)
Isn't VX pure protein ?........:o)
:)
Absolutely. I take VX supplements to bulk up.
BEEFCAKE!
That's all I can do to bump this thread.....nite ya'll !
Yes -- and Honda looks like it will actually go into the small jet market: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1467663/posts
Right now these things have vertical liftoff, can cruise at 350mph and have four hour fuel capacity. Can carry four people.
Imagine.
Imagine the nuts out there driving, flying.
Depends on how much you want to spend up front to save a gallon of gas. For me it's about half the price of a gallon of gas. After the first 50,000 miles or so I might actual say a buck.
The average car costing about $20,000 gets about 27 miles to gallon. To keep the number even use $2.70 a gallon. What is fair price for a car that needs no fuel? 120,000 mile fuel cost would be $12,000. Assuming no change in performance, confort, safty, etc., I'd pay $26,000 for it. What would you pay?
TI springs are already available:
"Titanium alloy suitable for spring manufacture is approximately 40 times more expensive than spring making steel alloys. Since the titanium spring is typically 60% as heavy as steel we can assume the material required costs about 25 times as much. At first glance this would appear prohibitive. In practice the retail price of the spring is rarely this high, though it is often 4 to 5 times as much."
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