Could Ancient Pottery Improve Spacecraft Tiles?

astroengine writes "Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded nearly $500,000 to scientists from the Getty Conservation Institute, Stanford's National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) and the Aerospace Corporation to study the chemical and physical properties of ancient Attic pottery. Why? Well, the project will improve our understanding of iron-spinel chemistry, which is critical to the advanced ceramics used for thermal protection in aerospace applications, such as in the heat shield tiles used by spacecraft during atmospheric reentry."

Comments

Finally...

[vikingpower]

... a good reason to tell those kids in high school there IS good reason to occupy their minds with ( Latin and ) Greek antiquity. Which is not to be confounded, as the OP demonstrates, with antiquities at the fair.

Re:Finally...

[vlm]

Either that, or "those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." Which is advice that I wish that half of our first-world countries' leaders would listen to. Fall of the Roman Empire, anyone?

The bad news is they've done so, and it's all good for them, so they're not changing course.

Note that what the general public would call the "decline" was actually for the endless bureaucrat drones their "peak", so from their point of view, let the good times roll! Yes they all got killed in the end, only AFTER the general public bore the brunt, so again they come out ahead. There is really not much downside for them, is there?

The folks who need to listen are the general public, but bread and circuses numb them.

Re:Finally...

[AthanasiusKircher]

The folks who need to listen are the general public, but bread and circuses numb them.

Which is why Plato noted that democracy is generally one of the worst forms of government, generally degenerating into tyranny:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato's_five_regimes

Of course, we don't actually have a democracy in the U.S. (despite the rhetoric, we've never had more than a representative republic, except occasionally on very local scales). But we do have enough of the bad characteristics of democratic systems influencing our government that Plato's critique probably applies. And one could make an argument that the U.S. has been moving its way through the progression of Plato's theory of government degeneration: "aristocracy" (learned founders, who designed a system that was based on successive levels of disconnect from democratic opinion --who could vote was limited, Senate was elected by legislatures, President was elected by a "college" of electors, etc.), then "timocracy" (expansionist phase in the U.S.), "oligarchy" (concentration of power in the super-rich in the late 19th and early 20th century), and since the various rights movements, closer to true "democracy," with ever-encroaching hints at tyranny as our rights are gradually degraded.

Note that I don't necessarily agree with Plato completely, and the mapping is not exact. But his prized form of "aristocracy" (which is more like a meritocratic government founded on smart people) has really never been tried, outside of Star Trek perhaps.

Could Ancient Pottery Improve Spacecraft Tiles?

[rossdee]

Sure, but you'll probably need Daniel Jackson to translate the writing, and Samantha Carter to work out the technical details...

The answer lies in ancient Chinese history

[arcite]

"Early in the sixteenth century, Wan decided to take advantage of China's advanced rocket and fireworks technology to launch himself into outer space. He supposedly had a chair built with forty-seven rockets attached. On the day of lift-off, Wan, splendidly attired, climbed into his rocket chair and forty seven servants lit the fuses and then hastily ran for cover. There was a huge explosion. When the smoke cleared, Wan and the chair were gone, and was said never to have been seen again."

If only poor Wan hu had covered his rocket chair in pottery tiles to act as a heat shield for re-entry maneuver, he may have lived to tell the tale. Legend says he saw no need for a space suit as he could hold his breath for 'a really long time'. The truth is out there!

Re:So Erich von Däniken was right . . .

[vlm]

Although ancient humans possessed the technology for space travel, their governments kept squabbling about the strategic direction of space projects, so they never got off the ground.

The ones that did get off the ground are literally the ones that are not being dug up and studied... think about it...

If future civilization dug up the "factory seconds" "push pull or drag trade in pile" at the local aerospace factory, they'd probably have a pretty negative view of us too. "why this nozzle found in a dumpster marked "scrap" (whatever that word means) wouldn't even pass magnefluxing for crack detection, I bet the ancients never got a thing off the ground"

Ancient Astronauts

[turgid]

This is further proof of the existence of ancient alien astronauts. They came to Earth and taught us pottery using the same level of technology employed in the heat shields of their flying saucers.

You heard it here first: ancient pottery is derived from alien heatshield technology.

I Doubt It

[segedunum]

Not sure what they are trying to find out here. There was something of an arms race going on in Formula 1 during the past year with such materials and exhaust blown diffusers, the caveat being that you needed heat resistant materials to stop the exhaust gas melting the back of the car. Most specialised heat resistant material these days is a form of carbon fibre reinforced polymer with a coating such as those from Zircotech (extremely specialised and secret in the case of Formula 1 and not for use elsewhere).

I'm not too sure what they're going to find out that isn't already known. The article was a little bit wishy washy.

Perhaps,

[Samantha Wright]

But how would you convince a museum to "permanently loan" you enough ancient pottery to cover an entire spacecraft in the stuff?