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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."
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.
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.
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~ |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!
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.
Is it easier to purify carbon nanotubes in microgravity too?
Short answer: yes.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.
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!?"
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.
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.
In the I, Robot stories, robots were most emphatically designed not to be weapons. Your rules would allow robot weaponry.
I'm not so sure that I, Robot portrays the rules as a "bad idea" but rather a source of inconsistency -- and therefore a source of great story material.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
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