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Spacecraft, Heal Thyself
carpdeus writes "The European Space Agency, citing the fact that we don't glue ourselves together when we nick ourselves, has funded a study toward creating a spacecraft that could fix itself. By replacing a few of the fibers in the resinous material that make up a spacecraft's skin with hollow fibers containing adhesive, the material has a chance to fix itself when it encounters minor damage, much the way our skin does when blood wells up and clots. While admittedly years away, such material makes longer duration missions a possibility."
Sound like the smelly green goo inside of my bicycle tires... or fix-a-flat... same idea just in small capsules embedded
It is the electronics and science instruments that need the care, not the hull. It would probably be cheaper, and perhaps lighter, to have a tough hull than a complex one than can close itself up. Pits and holes on the outside are not where the problems usually are. Unless, perhaps it is some kind of tank or sealed instrument. However, their process appears way too slow to seal that up fast in the vacuum of space. They are not clear on what is being protected and comparing it to the alternatives, such as gels and styrofome-like substances.
Table-ized A.I.
The key word in the article is "minor". This would work for small abrasions, but would it really be useful? Think of all the accidents in space we have had so far. None of them would have been prevented by this technology.
They'd save themselves a lot of time & money, if they just asked the DND to let them research the makeup of self-healing metal found in Roswell
"I happened to notice when I put that piece of foil in that box, and the damn thing just started unfolding and just flattened out. Then I got to playing with it. I'd fold it, crease it, lay it down and it'd unfold. It's kinda wierd. I couldn't tear it. The color was in between tinfoil and lead foil, about the thickness of lead foil."
From: http://www.qsl.net/w5www/roswell.html
(about 1/2 way down - use CTRL+F)
Adeptus
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
I'm sure we're all aware of just how much stuff came to us as a spin-off from the space industry. If this technology works, it could revolutionise so many things - roofing felt that lasts hundreds of years, GRP car bodywork that unscuffs itself, effectively crackproof consumer electronics and a plethora of stuff I'm too dull to think of. Early doors, but a fascinating pre-nanotech advance in materials technology.
A pretty standard sci-fi image will be tossed on its head... how many books, tv shows, and movies have featured spaceships in the future being repaired, often by a robot or by someone in a spacesuit outside the ship? If the ship can heal itself without the intervention of the crew, well, that changes things.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
This again raises the concept of Gaia. Isn't the Earth itself just a big living spaceship? If we want to travel beyond our solar system, we ought to build something like Earth, only smaller.
This idea has been well-represented in sci-fi for decades.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
http://slashdot.org/science/01/02/15/041205.shtml
And my, what an old dupe it is!
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Following a spacecraft healing itself:
Kent Brockman: Well, this reporter was...possibly a little hasty earlier and would like to...reaffirm his allegiance to this country and its human president. May not be perfect, but it's still the best government we have. For now.
[notices "HAIL ANTS" sign taped up, tears it down]
Oh, yes, by the way, the spacecraft still in extreme danger, may not make it back, attempting risky reentry, bla bla bla bla bla bla. We'll see you after the movie.
Developers: We can use your help.
The majority would probly be located near the nose as that is what hits the small dust.
I don't preview or spellcheck.
Self-sealing aircraft fuel tanks date back to WWII. This is a comparable level of self-repair: a material that expands to fill and seal gaps.
Will we now have to be assimilated?
Reality is a big nasty dragon. Fortunately I don't believe in dragons.
I'm not sure if they're trying to say that our bodies don't naturally glue themselves back together or that we don't apply glue to cuts, but either way, they're wrong.
not some small-size cosmic garbage. Mir flew for more then decade at once, under protection of magnitosphere, but not atmosphere. Did it have any problems with "small damage"? Not really (collision with supply ship is a big damage). Do interplanetary probes suffer from micrometiorites? If memory serves me well, they suffer from human mistakes and radiation/cosmic rays...
"That's the Germans for you," he said. "Everything they make turns into something else in case there's a war..."
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I heard about stuff like this a few years ago, where minor fractures could be 'healed.' I also remember jay leno making jokes about it, saying that now women in california will live forever :eek:
Perhaps this is the first step towards bioships, à la species 8472? As well as the ability to heal themselves, I've often thought that deep space vehicles should be able to actively find fuel and even to reproduce. This is largely based on the notion of interstellar unmanned probes, which have to be intelligent enough to make decisions on their own. The best way to do this may be to make use of the amazing systems which Evolution (or the Creator) have provided us with, and have biological elements in our probes. Of course there are serious ethical questions we must ask ourselves before beginning such an endeavour, but this is something to take seriously.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
And they're using adhesives to mimick the way our skin heals itself?
"Yeah NASA. Could you send up another box of those extra large Band-aids? Damn Russian Statelite nailed our port side again. They really need to start making them bigger. The one meter Band-aids just aren't cutting it. Oh and no more Snoopy ones. The Europeon's are still laughing their asses off about that last batch."
Or more to the point, how does the current stuff work? What is the trigger for it turning from the liquid form into a solid?
I can make two guesses, either it hardens in the presence of oxygen (or something else in the air), which won't work in space, or it remains liquid under pressure and hardens once the pressure eases (eg it has sprung a leak). The pressure thing would result in the whole lot hardening once a hole occured, which still wouldn't work.
hmmmm....
Agreed, I'm a "rocket scientist", (kind of, work with commercial satellites). The most common failure in spacecraft is electrostatic discharge. The best way to invest your money if you want to reduce failure rates in equipment in space is to invent better grounding systems.
In the vacuum of space, electrostatic charges build up as the effect of charged particles emitted by the sun that hit the spacecraft. Since there is no air to conduct the charges away, they accumulate until something breaks, unless there are conducting paths from everywhere to some conductive part of the craft's chassis. The trick in designing the systems is to make sure there will always be some conducting path.
Unfortunately, for scientific spacecraft there may be some instruments that need a very high insulation. Worse, since parts are usually outsourced to different manufacturers, it's very difficult to make sure they are all compatible with respect to charge dissipation. If you have parts with very low conductivity, the slightest variation in conductivity between different parts may cause a very high voltage difference to appear in some interfaces.