Glass In Spaaaaace 292
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."
Mr. Day? more Mr. Dooms Day (Score:5, Funny)
ok... (Score:2, Funny)
glass in spaaaaaace? (Score:1, Funny)
Build a better BONG (Score:3, Funny)
What a relief! (Score:5, Funny)
Did no one else see this? (Score:2, Funny)
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.
Re:Build a better BONG (Score:3, Funny)
Nachos anyone?
Re:purity (Score:3, Funny)
Container-less Glass (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Everything is made better... In Space (Score:2, Funny)
Sponge-Tron: Everything is chrome in the future!
I can see it now, orbital chrome plating factories!
Re:Purer carbon nanotubes too? (Score:5, Funny)
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.)
Re:Let me think... (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Transparent Aluminium (Score:4, Funny)
Transparent Aluminium [wikipedia.org] is a fictional material from the Star Trek [wikipedia.org] universe.