Could Ancient Pottery Improve Spacecraft Tiles? 57
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."
Could Ancient Pottery Improve Spacecraft Tiles? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, but you'll probably need Daniel Jackson to translate the writing, and Samantha Carter to work out the technical details...
Short answer .... (Score:2, Funny)
No.
Long answer .... no, but it's still a cool project.
Ancient Astronauts (Score:3, Funny)
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.