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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."
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.
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.
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.
Yea, but the shipping costs are just crazy!
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.
And when we get really advanced, Chromium usage will increase as well...
Sponge-Tron: Everything is chrome in the future!
I can see it now, orbital chrome plating factories!
Is it easier to purify carbon nanotubes in microgravity too?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeees.
(Note: Length and pitch of the Long Answer may be affected by answerer's velocity relative to yourself.)
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
1- sand requires way less gentle treatment than electronics or humans. Means lesser costs of the rocket. And taking the furnace would cost, but that's one-time expense.
2- yes, from some asteroid. Easy.
3- launch from surface of asteroid - $50.
4- 5ft of hyper-high-quality lenses, nanooptics, etc may be well worth several $mln.
5- fill a rocket with bubblewrap or you'll end up with a lander full of glass shards.
6- profit.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
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