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Glass In Spaaaaace
AnKsT wrote to mention an article on NASA's site about creating and manipulating glass in space. From the article: "In microgravity...you don't need a container. In Day's initial experiments, the melt--a molten droplet about 1/4 inch in diameter--was held in place inside a hot furnace simply by the pressure of sound waves emitted by an acoustic levitator. With that acoustic levitator, explains Day, 'we could melt and cool and melt and cool a molten droplet without letting it touch anything.' As Day had hoped, containerless processing produced a better glass. To his surprise, though, the glass was of even higher quality than theory had predicted."
And best of all... In space, no one can hear you break the glass.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Meh. Microgravity rocks.
This reminds me of that commerical for Windex, where the term "High Definition Window" was used... How much per square foot?
The only reason he wants to create glass in space is to one day fashion a giant magnifying glass in space. After calibrating it on ants, he plans to bring the world to its knees.
God spoke to me.
But can molten glass in space sort bolts.
I'd be much more interested in new discoveries of delivering televised footage of muppet pigs exploring the universe.
Several SF authors have predicted that electronics manufacturing would eventually move to space because it'd be easier to produce purer semiconductor crystals in microgravity. Maybe the time has come?
I wonder how long it will take humans to use this technology to build a better bong. Think about it -- bongs made in space...
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
It's a good thing they figured out a way to make glass in space. Maybe now they come overcome the titanic production hurdles involved with producing glass here on Earth, and bring down its astronomic cost.
This article is a perfect example of the sort of technological advances that will be possible when we establish a space habitat capable of sustaining industrial production. Microgravity is a condition that is almost impossible to replicate here at the bottom of the gravity well, and we are just beginning to realize the applications.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"But why is that important? What's wrong with glass made of silica?
For windows silica is just fine. But glass made from other chemical compositions offers a panoply of unexpected properties. For example, there are "bioactive glasses" that can be used to repair human bones. These glasses eventually dissolve when their work is done. On the other hand, Day has developed glasses which are so insoluble in the body that they are being used to treat cancer by delivering high doses of radiation directly to a tumor site."
Cool beans!
I can see this as being a new field of manufacturing in the not so distant future. Imagine zero-gravity precision made materials and parts for a variety of uses. We could make better lenses for microscopes and telescopes as an example.
;)
If you're smart, you'll start a company to capitalize on this future market
Glass, concrete, etc. Everything is made better in space.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Currently waiting for the Space Shuttle to begin flying again:
http://www.guigne.com/space/spacedrums.asp
Is it easier to purify carbon nanotubes in microgravity too? Space elevator anyone?
11 1101 1011111 0100 000 110 1011111 0101 10 01 1011111 101 1 011 1011111 0 1111 11 111 1011111 101
All that quality & no one to buy...
unless there are idle billionaires that will get the stuff for bragging rights.
Go Away! Not for Sale
It's interesting research, but the manufacturing-in-space argument is weak. This has been used as a justification for the expense of going to orbit with astronauts, and it never rings true to me. Floride glass fiber won't be manufactured more than 100 feet from the surface of the Earth in the forseeable future. Has any of the materials-properties-in-space research has lead to new commercial products?
April 14, 2003... Slashdot is really a frontrunner. Next they'll report that Bush won a second term in office...
Only a few serious answers so far, but do you realize how important this kind of work could be? He has proven a concept. Now it is much more likely for a corperation to invest in space stations to build their products. I'm not saying it'll happen within the next year, but that is it closer. Now corperations will feel the investment is less risky with much more payoff. Can you imagine having your CPU made with the parts so much more pure then they are now? Engineers could build smaller chips because they wouldn't have to account for the impurities that naturally come in the materials.
April 14, 2003 -- In BOLD letters for Jesus "tap-dancing" Christ's sake.
How is this news? I realize the mentality of if I haven't seen it it's new to me, but come on.
Is there an update or something?
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here.
"And best of all... In space, no one can hear you break the glass."
Or wind.
But how do you get the glass back from space? You gotta "drop" it down to earth to get it back, right! Of course I understand the real ability is to work with micro sized pieces we'd never be able to manapulate here. at that scale glass is nearly as strong as metal... espically flawless glass.
In microgravity...you don't need a container.
Right. Until there's an accident when someone is too busy playing with their velco stripe and a blob of molten glass goes into someone's eye on the other side of the station. If that happens over the state of California, Cal-OSHA will be all over the space station like Bill Clinton with an intern. They would have to shut down the space program until it was safe go back into space -- again.
I wish I was space
If you RTFA, you'll see that they are working with non-stardard types of glass in addition to standard glass. I would imagine the metallic glasses wouldn't be quite to susceptible to breakage.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
How do you get it back down without breaking it?
You get a funny, but I see the intelligence agencies using this to build better spy satellites.
"He did some glass-melting experiments, trying to pull thin fibers out of melts," recounts Day. "During the low-gravity portion of the plane's flight, when g was almost zero, the fibers came out with no trouble. But during the double-gravity portion of the plane's flight, the fiber that he was pulling totally crystallized."
Like, totally, dude.
I guess "that" generation finally made it to the real world.
-Adam
why is this only at 4 this comment should be modded up to ten-hundred i mean think about it
To confirm you're not a script, please piss in my ear.
"When most people think of glass, they think of that transparent stuff in window panes. But glass doesn't have to be transparent nor is it always found in windows."
Wow. So what the man claims is that glass can be used for other things besides windows?! And it can be opaque or translucent?!
*HEAD EXPLODES*
Come on, seriously... editors, the least you can do is take five damn seconds to see if the story really satisfies the "new" part of "news." This is a very interesting story, but I'd like something a tad more up-to-date... for all I know, the year-old fiber optics in my neighborhood are already made using this "experimental" technology!
Right
And tell me, genius, how would you secure a large batch of finish glasswares when you are dropping down the outer atmosphere at Mach18 velocity.
Last time I checked, the shuttle produces
quite a bit of vibration. How are you going to cushion it, boxes of Kleenix?
Philip Glass music, while we watch molten glass bubbles floating about poetically. :)
Siiiigh. I'm going to guess that's because SF authors heard about scientific theories/research.
Scifi authors are just people who are good at making semi-plausible science to help an otherwise boring plot along. It's like curry...the meat's pretty lackluster, so there's a strong sauce. Few of them actually envisioned stuff that wasn't already thought of by lots of other people, or at least obvious if you sat down and thought about it for a bit. For example, I've never been really impressed with Asimov's rules for robots. They're pretty plainly obvious, but nobody came up with them, because there wasn't any need (there still isn't!)
Please help metamoderate.
One of the space products has been Microspheres several magnitudes more precise than those made on earth. Other of the NASA Microgravity projects can lead directly to ultrapure chip development for use in, for example, pinhead size medical and scientific gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers.
Because the microgravity should allow for high chip yield and high quality, the remaining issue is cost of production.
Allowing for $10,000 per Kg (source) for a mature launch/return system like the Saturn 5, Delta, or Titan series, a 100 Kg furnace containing 10 Kg of product would cost $1,000,000 to orbit. If the output is 0.01 gram chips at 95% yield, that gives you 950,000 chips. If you can sell them for a bit over $1.05 per chip, you're in the money. At only $5000/Kg, you are way ahead!
The medical market alone for $5-10 one-shot broad spectrum biochemical testers would easily absorb the 10 million-plus that could be produced with monthly launches.
1. Insert sample into tester
2. Plug tester into USB/Firewire port
3. Read results from software support package
4. (Profit!)
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
Rockets that launch satellites into space make a lot of vibration too and yet many a satellite with delicate equipment has been launched. Oh yeah, the Hubble's EXTREMELY delicate lenses and mirrors (not counting the original main mirror that was not right before the original launch) were transported in an violent explosion of combustible gases that I'm sure had to be 'smooth as silk' in order to keep them from breaking.
Transporting breakable items seems to be possible to me.
welcome our new fragile - *CRASH!*
Uh, now that I think about it, a beowulf cluster would be much more appropriate.
While this may seem a bit odd, seeing as how they'd have to get that glass back to Earth without shattering it, they don't need to worry going back to Earth to make profits.
This is the perfect thing for moving spacestations and eventual moon colonization forward. The station and moon have to deal with micro-meteor showers, which don't bother us because the rocks burn up in the atmosphere. Better glass would be a great contribution to these places to put up with the showers without suffering the view- the first private places on the moon will likely be held by the ultra wealthy, and, by golly, they'll want a view! Astronauts would probably thing it's damn skippy, too.
Then, as most good inventions work, as the rich buy it, it eventually becomes cheaper and cheaper until Joe America can sit on his front porch with his friends on the moon and chuck empty beer cans at their super-glass dome without worry, just to watch them 'float' through the air.
Assuming they find an economical way to get the glass to Earth, this can be perfect for deep-sea scientific endevours- glass that will hold up to higher pressures would allow for long time monitoring of underwater ecosystems with less reliance on miniature subs and wetsuits. Perhaps we'll even get talking dolphins.
Glass blowery is an art form that all true geeks should appreciate. It combines the best of chemistry with the best of blowery and some of the most complex mathematics. Indeed, using fairly advanced physics, calculus and fluid dynamics it is possible to blow shapes such as the Archimedes spiral and the Lagrange multiloop. While most traditional glass blowers do not have the mathematics or physics background necessary to calculate the algorithm to blow awe inspiring shapes, most geeks do. It's too bad that more geeks aren't into the art form. Their talents could lead to fantastic, abstract creations!
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
does it run linux?
"...if people respected copyright more, like you guys do with the GPL so religiously, [the DMCA] wouldn't be necessary."
Oh wait, this is Slashdot...
http://data.engin.umich.edu/umseds/kc135/nanotubes /Y2K/proposal/proposal.htm
Zen Kôan:
What is the sound of one glass breaking in space?
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Ohhh, GLASS in space, I thought you said GAS in space, like in Rocket Man
I think this could add a whole new realm to the meaning of "overnight shipping." Or maybe instead of "2 day air" we could have "2 Hour Entry, delivered right to your doorstep." For cases and monitors they could use a recycleable heatsheild for delivery. GPS systems would find out where you are located and drop it to you. Shipping on some items, like the monitor, would be a bit expensive; but hey, you get it in a few hours. Things like Intel Pentium 4s, however, would have much cheaper shipping; they wouldn't need a heat sheild. Maybe Intel would actually become an option to the informed buyer? This could work! And while they're at it, any faulty computer components produced could be bundles up, strapped to an orbitting sattelite, and dropped on any misbehaving Arab WoMD production sites or on the French.
So, it says "He was placed in a grave with evil men". Errr - where does that happen? Please, since he was buried by himself in all 4 gospels...
And the part "And so he will see his descendants; he will live a long life". So, then, who was Jesus' wife? And what where their children's names?
And after all that he does, all he gets is "And so I will give him a place of honor, a place among great and powerful men". Huh??? Is that all that the son of god gets to do?
Of course, you probably have some way to weasel out of that. But those phrases are not a prophecy of the son of god.
Yes, I know this is offtopic.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Well, at least it's as true as it ever was.
Glass fibers are fairly resistant to vibration.
Not when you put them next to each other- they would, you know, BANG into each other? That's why I said "large bunch", silly.
There are other ways to microgravity...
They said that it is one of the advantage of developing the technology "in space".
That is some nifty research. Can you see it now-"Canon releases S-glass lenses throughout the EOS system lineup". I do have a couple of questions though-First....how did the researchers avoid contamination of the glass samples during rides on the "Vomit Comet" and second...why did that have to add that awful photo of the lead scientist? Seriously though....I love NASA! Great job guys....
"We herd sheep....we drive cattle...we LEAD people! Lead me...follow me...or get out of my way!" GEN George Patton
We got enough problems with Bush relatives. There's Jeb in Florida, trying to push the Schiavo case as far as he can take it, no doubt hoping to be the third Bush in the White House. Please, DON'T think of the children, leave them darned twins out of it!
Unless, maybe, they can marry each other and one can be the President and the other can be the first, uhh, spouse?
Infuriate left and right
1. Build a couple of million $ worth rocket 2. Fill it with sand 3. Send it to space for another couple of million $ 4. Make 5 ft of glass 5. Profit... oh no ... wait ...
sounds about right ... as long as its SPACE made kleenex
If you had something that was very hot and were able to suspend it in a true vacuum, then its heat would be suspended. (is this right? could light traverse a perfect vacuum to allow the escape of energy?) Could this be a way to transfer energy around the universe? Heat something up, accelerate it and the container to transport speed, and then seal it all in a pure vacuume (it's feasible we'll one day be able to do this). When it comes near to its destination, fill the vacuume, and start drawing energy away. Perhaps this could be an easy way for vessels to store up large amounts of power for space travel. You could go up to a star, gather heat, and set off, hoping not to run into asteroids en-route.
Believe with me, my saplings.
Where did the additional 2 laws come from? They don't really make sense either... for example, if I liked this babe robot/android my buddy had, I would use Law 5 and ask it to come to my secret lair... and voila, my unofficial OWNED robot! I would simply issue like "stay here" and the robot would never be able to leave.
Asimov went to great extend to explore the philosophy and implementation of his laws... even added Law 0, Must protect all mankind. It's sort of crass to butcher his wonderful concepts that help spread robotic dreams to some many young minds.
..bright screens for bright people, but now I've got to wear sunglassess.
it's GLASS IN SPACE-SPACE-space-space-........this was first introduced on The Muppet Show as PIGS IN SPACE-SPAC....you get the idea.
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
I for one welcome our new insect-killing overloards.
Just ride them down the Space Elevator. Most of the elevator traffic would go up only, so no problem here?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Yeah, "will be called Immanuel" and quite a few more. You need really serious "stretching of the facts" to make them agree 100%.
Please debunk all this. 100% of these please.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
The glass in space thing reminds me of a joke.
;)
NASA spent years, researching and experimenting to come up with a pen that astronauts could write in space with. And they finally came up with one, after spending millions of dollars.
And you know what the Russians did, they used a Pencil
Now how funny is that !
"A mind is a terrible thing to waste
"I don't think its appropriate to talk OT on Slashdot."
a) At least half of the interesting discussions on Slashdot are offtopic.
b) I think that one should be prepared to participate in any discussions arising from content in one's own signature.
In general, it's in pretty bad taste to put something potentially inflammatory in your signature, because of the tendency to incite threadjackings. Religion and politics both usually fall into that category, regardless of where it falls on the spectrum.
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Finally... anybody seen scottie talking into mice lately?
When most people think of glass, they think of that transparent stuff in window panes. But glass doesn't have to be transparent nor is it always found in windows.
Learning is fun...
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
For those that didn't catch the bait left by the original poster...
Transparent Aluminium is a fictional material from the Star Trek universe.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Molten metals doped with minerals cooled into glass become transparent. Possible? Heck I have no idea. This whole article was fascinating to me. When I read that part about more than silica could be cooled into glass my mind immediately thought of ST:IV.
It's a great time to be alive.
This in essence shows you how the fibres might be made on earth. If you keep the melt region small then the convective forces should be small, and have little time to redistibute the components by shear thinning. If you have a rod of the material which you locally heat to melting point using an RF furnace, and you draw the fibre upwards, then you ought to get comparable results. Or am I missing something here?
One of the most demanding applications of optics technology is for use in microchip manufacture.
One important limiting factor in the creation of smaller and smaller microchips is the lenses used to etch the designs in the silicon. Even with the most advanced lenses, the designs can still be blurry, making the error rate in very small process chips rather high.
No doubt this industry could benifit extremely from very clear and pure glass such as this.
"Die Cast Construction it's a lost art."
-Optimus Prime.
Some of you might not remember the Transformer's episode. However it's useful in regards to building in space. Using focused sunlight and magnets you could build space stations and space craft. It would solve the delema mentioned in another article about the aging shuttle fleet. Why carry stuff up, when we can use moon rocks to build it.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I read an article about making glass in space about 6 or 7 months ago. This is not news.
Also, item 144, where Jesus supposedly implies he will return during John's life. No, he does no such thing. He merely tells Peter to mind his own business. I find it hard to trust a source that pulls such tricks of semantics for the express purpose of refuting another source.
In reference to the name Immanuel, Jesus is referred to as Immanuel and Emmanuel by people even up to this day, so that prophecy turns out to be true. Determining whether it was self-fulfilling or not is left as an exercise to the reader.
No, I'm not going to sit here and go through every one of those line by line. It's quite obvious what the writer's agenda is and that they are willing to compromise their own integrity for the sake of refuting a source they have a personal stake in refuting. Seeing it, though, makes me wonder if I shouldn't make a rebuttal page and make this a long-term project. I wouldn't be surprised to find that this has already been done, though, which would save me a lot of work.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
There are space pens.
They weren't created by the American government
The Aremicans originally used pencils as well.
Bits of the pencil can break of.
Info Here
And tell me, genius, how would you secure a large batch of finish glasswares when you are dropping down the outer atmosphere at Mach18 velocity.
Avoid the mach 18 by producing the wares in a high altitide airplane instead of a shuttle.
There's no place like ~/
From the site: "Listen to this story via streaming audio, a downloadable file, or get help." Guess there's no glass in space for dummies..
-- # man women
Psychopath
'Nuff said.
Much higher than predicted, eh? Sounds perfect...until one day the "perfect glass" attacks us an kills us all in the name of its silicon god.
I wonder, how much time does it take to cool glass properly. Would it be possible to use a huge vertical pipe (possibly attached to a tower building) with magnetic stopper on the ground of the pipe to cause near-zero gravity with a portable cooling device with the glass sample falling free through the pipe?
The title of this story is a throwback to a regular skit on The Muppet Show called Pigs in Space, which was a takeoff on Star Trek. It took place on the USS Swinetrek and starred Miss Piggy and some other characters that I believe were only in that skit. The skit was announced on each show by an announcer who exaggerated the "Space" in the title in that way.
Interestingly, there is currently a USS Swinetreak playset available. How weird. Heck, maybe more people know about Pigs in Space than I thought. I wasn't aware that The Muppet Show was airing in syndication anywhere.
RP
the bit with the mouse was great. James 'Scotty' Doohan was god.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
And that gets you microgravity how?
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
Tag lost or not installed.
Well sure the tests were made in space, but we are talking about really quikly coldify stuff. Why can't we simply melt a lot stuff we want to make glass from and drop it from a building or tower while applying extreme cold to it? Wouldn't it work just like in space?
If the required time to solidify is quick enought the tower dosen't even need to be very high.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
That says just one thing. The truth is in the middle. When side A says there's no flaws and side B says there's a lot of flaws, it means there are several flaws. If you had to go as far as to number 143-144 to find something easy to undermine, most likely at least few issues are rock-solid.
"It's quite obvious what the writer's agenda" - the same can be said about you.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Why would someone want to make glass beads in Outer Space?! What numb skull is coming up with these ideas anyway? http://www.newpath4.com/travel2space.htm Progress: Ain't it cool? http://free.seekon.com/CarSizeSteamEngine . We'll be completely off OPEC oil and on our way to being off of ALL OIL in less than 5 years. Good times are a-coming, good times are a-coming... and when anyone breaks a law, we'll put them in a sheet of flat glass and shoot them toward Alpha Centauri.
Granted, I have an agenda in the matter, as well. Doesn't everyone who gets involved in a cause they believe in? The difference, I suppose, is that I'm willing to see errors where there are errors. The debunker appears to have no problem with manufacturing errors that don't exist.
After thousands of years of copying, retelling, and translating, it's inevitable that mistakes will be made. We're human, after all. A message can't make it around a room without some changes, let alone across time and different languages. I can't think of it off the top of my head, but I've seen a couple of passages where words and numbers were transposed, drastically changing the descriptions of some things.
Fortunately, given the archeological finds of ancient copies of Biblical texts, it appears that the content has remained mostly on track, and the message is intact. "Love your neighbor as yourself" started out that way and remains that way in the moderm Bible.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
Hmm, I got it differently. Slaughtering whole nation just because someone from it did something bad to someone from your nation? (and then promised to repair the harm)? There's way too much bloodshed, too little of love.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Take that, and apply it to an entire species. Bigger in scale, more powerful and apparently cruel when looked at the individual level. I'm sure if skin cells could talk they'd say similar things about the spankings they endure. Over the course of the Old Testament, however, the "spankings" decrease in frequency and power as people grow.
There is an important demarcation point, however. The crucifixion of Jesus is a turning point in the history of the human-God relationship. Sealed with the blood of His own Son, humans are promoted beyond their childhood. Spankings are no longer necessary at all. At that point, we have all we need to mature as a species, and the reigns are handed over to us to make of the world what we will.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"