Posted on 08/19/2007 11:59:34 AM PDT by marvlus
A MIRACLE material for the 21st century could protect your home against bomb blasts, mop up oil spillages and even help man to fly to Mars.
Aerogel, one of the world’s lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
I painted my home with stuff from a company that won the 2003 award from NASA for the best spin-off product for that year. Add some to paint and it keeps the house warm in winter and cool in summer. Wonder if there’s a connection?
Bump for unspeakably cool stuff.
Ping- Interesting uses here.
It’s actually something like styrofoam. The microscopic particles crash through the structure and become lodged at some depth depending on their mass. They leave a trail where they pass but are for the most part not damaged themselves so they remain as they were in space. What the particles are structurally was surprising although there hasn’t been much by way of a report since the initial recovery of the space probe.
Bump for later.
Indeed they do. I recently took a behind-the-scenes VIP tour of the Space Center here in Houston, and they were passing around big pix of the new rig. I was way surprised.
BTW, ever seen a Saturn V rocket up close? I stepped into the building where they have one displayed on its side, and it took my breath away. Literally. It's MASSIVE.
As we were making our way around NASA, seeing how dated everything is, it occurred to me that we really haven't done ANYTHING noteworthy to advance manned space flight since the shuttle came online. And the shuttles now look very very tired. One more tidbit of trivia: When astronauts enter commands into the shuttle's flight computer, they do so in HEX, using a computer and software designed in the 60s. Because it's so difficult and error-prone to work in hex, every command they enter shows up on a screen (called a scratch pad) in mission control, so it can be checked and confirmed before they press Enter.
MM (in TX)
It’s a floor wax AND a dessert topping!
Mike
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinoff2003/er_4.html;painter
Painting the interior or the exterior of a house can be quite an arduous task, but few realize that adding a fresh splash of color to the walls and siding of their homes can lead to reduced energy consumption and substantial savings on utility bills. Hy-Tech Thermal Solutions, LLC, of Melbourne, Florida, is producing a very complex blend of ceramic vacuum-filled refractory products designed to minimize the path of hot air transfer through ceilings, walls, and roofs. The insulating ceramic technology blocks the transfer of heat outward when applied to paint on interior walls and ceilings, and prevents the transfer of heat inward when used to paint exterior walls and roofs, effectively providing year-round comfort in the home.
As a manufacturer and marketer of thermal solutions for residential, commercial, and industrial applications, Hy-Tech Thermal Solutions attributes its success to the high performance insulating ceramic microsphere originally developed from NASA thermal research at Ames Research Center. Shaped like a hollow ball so small that it looks as if it is a single grain of flour to the naked eye (slightly thicker than a human hair), the microsphere is noncombustible and fairly chemical-resistant, and has a wall thickness about 1/10 of the sphere diameter, a compressive strength of about 4,000 pounds per square inch, and a softening point of about 1,800 ºC.
Hy-Tech Thermal Solutions improved upon these properties by removing all of the gas inside and creating a vacuum. In effect, a “mini thermos bottle” is produced, acting as a barrier to heat by reflecting it away from the protected surface. When these microspheres are combined with other materials, they enhance the thermal resistance of those materials.
In bulk, the tiny ceramic “beads” have the appearance of a fine talcum powder. Their inert, nontoxic properties allow them to mix easily into any type of paint, coating, adhesive, masonry, or drywall finish. Additionally, their roundness causes them to behave like ball bearings, rolling upon each other, and letting the coatings flow smoothly. When applied like paint to a wall or roof, the microsphere coating shrinks down tight and creates a dense film of the vacuum cells. The resulting ceramic layer improves fire resistance, protects from ultraviolet rays, repels insects such as termites, and shields from the destructive forces of nature.
And to add insult to injury. If we don’t change our plans to end the shuttle program in 2010 against a promise that we will have the new system ready in 2015 (sure...), we will be totally dependent on Russia for human access to space for at least 5 years and maybe much longer. Picture Vlad with his hand on the off button whenever he gets mad at us with our astronauts in the ISS.
AGREE. And on the topic of the ISS, while in NASA’s mockup facility, in the ISS end of the building they have a big color-coded graphic showing which components of the ISS were contributed by which countries. The graphic was almost monochrome, the only exception being a couple of small modules furnished by Japan.
MM (in TX)
ping (just in case)
And I bet all the aerogel factories will be put in China.
Post of the month.
Tesla was responsible for a lot of the innovations that are only just now leaving black project laboratories. There are libraries the Feds maintain of his stuff that are still highly classified. The presence of the lab and its location are even guarded secrets.
Neat video of the stuff, thanks.
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