Developing New Materials With Space Science

Scientists at the European Space Agency are using techniques inspired by their experience with outer space to make new and better products here on Earth. Certain compounds and alloys which are not normally viable can be made in different ways once forces such as gravity are removed from the equation. From BBC News: "The near absence of gravity (microgravity) has a profound influence on the way molten metals come together to form intermetallics and 'standard' alloys. With no 'up' and 'down' in the space environment, a melt doesn't rise and sink as it would at the planet's surface and that means solidification can turn out very differently. 'Gravity induces a lot of segregation of the elements,' explains IMPRESS scientist Dr Guillaume Reinhart. 'For instance, tantalum and niobium are heavy atoms and in doing the solidification process on the ground, they will segregate in different places and produce a very heterogeneous material. If you do this in microgravity, you obtain a very homogenous material because you prevent separation; and you have a much more efficient material, mechanically.'"

Comments

IMPRESS?

[Eudial]

Maybe I'm getting old, but IMPRESS sounds a wee bit too close to IPCRESS for comfort.

One step closer...

[Ihmhi]

...to Gundanium, one step closer to Gundams.

I really hate it when people mess up basic physics

[weedenbc]

Quote: "The near absence of gravity (microgravity)"

Hate to break it to people but there is gravity in space. Otherwise, what keeps the satellites and Moon in orbit? In fact, at the altitude the space station orbits, the Earth's gravity is about 88.9% as strong as it on the Earth's surface.

One of the biggest mistakes in the history of science was the term "zero-gee" which people assumed meant "zero-gravity" when in fact it means "zero force due to the acceleration from gravity". A "gee" is the amount of force gravity exerts at sea level.

Microgravity doesn't mean that gravity is 10^-6 what it is on Earth - it means that the force resulting on an object due to gravity is 1 million times less than what it is on Earth, and thus you get all the nice effects mentioned in the article.