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Space Technology

Spacecraft, Heal Thyself 112

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hopefully-not-hemorrhaging-funding dept.
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."
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Spacecraft, Heal Thyself More

Spacecraft, Heal Thyself

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  • Ben Rothlisburger there done that (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stupidNewbie ( 537989 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @03:39PM (#14527589)
    Sound like the smelly green goo inside of my bicycle tires... or fix-a-flat... same idea just in small capsules embedded
    • I totally agree. However the article blurb stating "it will heal itself" [sic] implies some sort of artificial intelligence, or intelligence at all when that isn't the fact. Then again, I never could understand the personification, or assigning a gender to inanimate objects. It just never made sense to me, the fond attachment to a mechanical or "workhorse" type of object that came from human emotion.

      I'm sure it's not just me in this respect- but it still doesn't make sense. If anyone would care to explain,
      • What makes you think that you need artificial intelligence to do the healing? Does your brain ask the blood to go clot at the wound site? No!! It's the biochemical stuff that goes on at the wound site that causes it to heal. So no, saying "heals itself" doesn't imply artificial intelligence.

  • What about the guts? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @03:41PM (#14527601) Journal
    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.
    • On a long spaceflight everything is important. The technology presented in this article will help to maintain the structural integrity of the hull by sealing microfractures that would eventually develop into larger cracks. (More) Academic article [findlay.co.uk]
    • How about making use of decentralized computing systems? I'm aware that not all instruments could be "backed-up" with this method, but by distributing a cluster of computers around the vehicle that could assume new functions on-the-fly, you could theoretically absorb a great deal of damage.
    • I think it's silly that the hull has to be made intentionally fragile in order for the sealant to be properly dispersed. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a hull that's already 'fully repaired'? IE: Whatever that stuff is they're using to harden it all up again, just make it out of that to begin with.

      It's like having a firewall that requires you to get successfully attacked before it decides whether or not to put a stop to the traffic.

      • Re:What about the guts? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mulciberxp ( 932827 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @04:23PM (#14527815)
        I think the point is, that when a tiny object crashes into the hull at 20,000mph, its going to do damage regardless of what the hull is made of. This concept is to lessen the inevitable damage.
      • A softer more skin like outer surface may be better at actually absorbing the impact and having a chance to stay together.
        A harder skin may be too brittle and or too heavy.

      • Re:What about the guts? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21, 2006 @04:52PM (#14527965)
        You don't understand Materials Science.

        The idea is to prevent small cracks from developing due to micro imperfections in the material, stresses imposed during flight, small-scale impacts, etc.

        If small cracks form, they can then grow and propagate while in flight possibly leading to catastrophic failure.

        The material is a composite reinforced with fiber "A" (could be carbon fibers, kevlar, whatever). It has specific strength requirements. The idea behind this technology is to fill this composite with a SMALL amount of hollow glass fibers. They would obviously design it such that the small addition of hollow glass fibers do NOT affect the overall strength of the material in a significant way. The addition of these hollow fibers however, allows for some resin to be stored and release during breakage of the fibers thus reacting chemically with the matrix to seal the crack tip and prevent propagation.

        What they would need to do is make sure these hollow glass fibers are properly dispersed in the matrix.

        Keep in mind that you can't just "make" the composite out of the resin that they are storing in the glass fibers. This chemical, whatever it is, would need to react with the matrix and "re-polymerize" sealing the crack tip. By itself, this chemical agent stored in the hollow glass-fibers would not be usefull at all to actually make the composite.
        • Easy! fill the tubes with equal parts of JBWeld mixing compounds! hull gets damaged, glass fibers filled with jbweld crack, releasing the resin and voila, instant hull fix. just make sure that each glass fiber filled with part-A of jbweld is paired up right next to a fiber filled with the curing compound.

          ok ok maybe not jbweld, but the idea still holds water. (so will jbweld, i know, i used it on my leaky coolant pipe in my car)
        • That is a great explanation. But I don't really understand why you would wait for stress to break the hollow fibers. If the released resin makes the material stronger, then why not just pre-break the hollow fibers here on Earth before launching the spacecraft.

          IOW, just build it strong in the first place.

          I was thinking it would be something more like a circulatory system. Suppose that you don't know in advance which parts of the spacecraft will undergo stress. To ensure mission success you would have to

      • Bicycle tyres have been available for some time with a self-repairing goo. So, the outermost shell of the spacecraft (the rubber of the tyre) can absorb minor nicks and scratches, but as soon as it is punctured and damages the inner shell (the 'goo' in the tyre) the inner shell oozes out and seals the damage in the outer shell...

        Make it double-layered and you're on to a winner.

      • Wouldn't it make more sense to have a hull that's already 'fully repaired'? IE: Whatever that stuff is they're using to harden it all up again, just make it out of that to begin with.

        No, in fact that would make no sense.

        No material currently known can withstand being hit by a solid object hurtling through space at maybe 50% the speed of light.

        Currently, only possibility seems to be repairing the damage after it has been done. This happens to be a solution for self-repair, rather than requiring someone to g

    • You think? A small hole in a spacecraft can cause incalculable damage. Check Columbia Shuttle. Why it burned? It had some minor scratches on its hull. Temperature got high, and in some 10secs it burned. Yes times are slow, and the material is expensive. But in the long run it would be better (for planetarian trip) as it would have enough time to 'heal' what damage it had during the trip. As for the price, it might get cheaper in the end...
      • A small hole in a spacecraft can cause incalculable damage. Check Columbia Shuttle.

        I was considering deep-space probes, not space shuttles. The shuttle reentry heat dissapation issues probably greatly limit what materials can be used in the outer shell. Thus, self-sealing goo is probably not appropriate there. Unmanned probes usually don't have to worry about reentry heat.
                 
    • Coat the outside in sand in bags, call it deployed ceramic armor.

      Or use a bamboo mat but call it processed cellulose armor.

      On a less serious note there is a metal/polymer composite that NASA paid to have researched and it worked. Where is it?

      Successful research does not garner future funds.

    • It would probably be cheaper, and perhaps lighter, to have a tough hull than a complex one than can close itself up.

      A hull tough enough to not be punctured by debris will not exist. There is no abrasion in space - it's all puncture and heat expansion / cool contraction that causes problems.

    • You are correct. I used to work at Hughes. The spacecraft structure is made out of graphite honeycomb panels in a six sided structure, three panels for payload electronics, three panels for satellite bus electronics.. They are very light and can sustain lots of damage and still keep their strength. I am not aware of a spacecraft ever failing in the way suggested by the article. There might be an application for the material, but it ain't spacecraft.

      • Mars Global Surveyor had severe structural damage. Nevertheless, I agree that most problems in spacecraft are electronics and software. I'd think that this technology would be more useful in fatigue-prone high performance structures such as aircraft.

        And, yes, I am a rocket scientist.
    • Drrr so spacecrafts don't need a failsafe against the 13,000 space junk objects larger then an inch flying around the planet at over 2,400mph which is 5 times faster then a 45cal bullet. I wish I had mod points left to mod you to naive hell.
    • It is the electronics and science instruments that need the care, not the hull

      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

      • Question: Would pressurizing these satellites help with the problem? (Yes, I know that has obvious problems, but I'm just trying to understand the static problem a little better.)
        • Would pressurizing these satellites help with the problem?

          A good question. Some Russian satellites that are pressurized, but I believe that's more to save something in testing. When a satellite is manufactured, one of the major costs is in the thermo-vacuum testing. The satellite must be put in a vacuum chamber with electric lights emulating the sun for extended periods. If the whole satellite is pressurized, these tests can be done in a much simpler way.

          The satellites that are most resistant to electric d

      • isn't it the people that need protection? if we're talking a long time space - years, say - shouldn't people get protection from particles in space? lacking the protection of the ozone layer, they must be terribly exposed.
      • OFF TOPIC (slightly)

        Man this is why I read slashdot. I've been reading it for a while now, and to have somebody say: Agreed, I'm a "rocket scientist", (kind of, work with commercial satellites). It makes this site so amazing. I reckon that when slashdot started they'd never have even imagined having rocket scientists reply to rocket-science related articles.

        But mind you, it does raise a good point about two things - the micro failure fix-speed is probably too slow for anything critical, and that anything
    • The proposed self-healing mechanism could provide a stop-gap measure for dealing with the space garbage that Slashdot previously reported [slashdot.org].

      What is even more interesting is that the proposed self-healing mechanism is similar to that used in tires which Sears once sold (still sells?). If a nail punctured the tread of one of these tires, a gooey liquid would ooze out of the hole. Exposure to air caused the liquid to quickly solidify, plugging up the hole.

      I tried to search for more information about those

  • Interesting, but is it really Practical (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kfaroo ( 719510 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @03:43PM (#14527613)
    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.

    • Re:Interesting, but is it really Practical (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Tx ( 96709 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @03:59PM (#14527697) Journal
      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.

      We haven't done a lot of long duration spaceflight yet. As the larger-than-expected particles collected by the Stardust mission show, cumulative minor damage could be a major issue for flights lasting years, so I'd say yes, it will be useful.
      • Stardast is essentially gargantuan effort to encouter such particles. Unless you try really hard, you'll not get hit.
      • Erm, how about voyager or pioneer. Personally I would say 25-30 years is a long duration space flight. I mean, if I was sitting on one of those space craft, 25-30 years would have taken up a fair deal of my life to date (100% - 120% of my life), Yet they're still working. And they were built before this sort of technology was around. Sorry, when you said "we haven't done a lot of long duration spaceflight yet" and got it so wrong, I had to say something.
        • Thoose are rather small spacecraft, and as far as I know they are not pressurised. Such spacecrafts are designed with multiple redundancy to all critical systems. If one of theese probes are hit by a particle, chances are low the particle will hit a critical component, and even if it does, the redundancy will take over. I have met one of the engineers who built the power supply system for the SMART-1 probe. He told me they tested the reliability of the power supply system by powering it up, and then attack
    • It does seem like the kind of tech that would end up having greater use OUTSIDE of spaceflight.
    • Many aircraft failures in the last 20 years have been attributed to metal fatigue. These are not huge cracks that are necessariy visible to the naked eye. They may be microscopic or in difficult to see areas (ie. on internally facing surfaces of the fuselage or wing). Spaceflight is going to be expensive, and to be commercially viable these craft will have to last for many, many flights. I would say that not only is this of interest to NASA (and probably Richard Branson :) ) but also to the greater comm

  • Self-Healing Metal (Score:4, Funny)

    by Adeptus_Luminati ( 634274 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @03:45PM (#14527621)
    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 [qsl.net]
    (about 1/2 way down - use CTRL+F)

    Adeptus

  • Weight? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by MyLongNickName ( 822545 )
    Okay... so you have a spaceship that not only meets requirements of getting folks safely into space, but has to carry enough "glue" to repair itself. Mind you, it would probably need much more glue than it would ever need, because it would have to be stored relatively uniformly around the exterior of the ship.

    Would the excess weight requirement make this not practical?

    • Re:Weight? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Gyga ( 873992 )
      The majority would probly be located near the nose as that is what hits the small dust.
    • That all depends on the density of the glue relative to the fibers in the composite. It could lighten the material, or make it heavier.
    • I think the idea is not that the ship is carrying a layer of glue in addition to its normal layer of shielding, but that the fibers of the shield are impregnated with the glue. It would might add a little to the weight, but if it allowed the surface to recover from significant damage or cut down on the cost of restoring the shuttle between flights, it might be worth whatever the cost in weight is. It's worth looking into, anyway, which is all I think the ESA is doing...
    • Mind you, it would probably need much more glue than it would ever need

      Um...
  • 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.
  • So far we've had Cryogenics, Nemesis, and a discussion on how small town economics works. And now an article on long lasting spacecraft programs. Is there some sort of space theme building? And is slashdot really the best place to recruit colonists? 'And now we're here, open the cryostasis and everyone out, including their mothers! inflate the inflatable basements! and dont forget to wake the women we brought along!' 'Sir, we were unable to bring any women! they refused to live in basements!' 'Well, dan
  • The Icarus Hunt:

    He set to work with his squeeze tubes again. "I'll never understand about that stuff," Shawn commented. "If it's so good at fixing hull cracks and ridges, why not coat the whole hull with it?"

    Seems like Sci-Fi writers believe we'll still have problems even a few hundred years in the future!

  • Colonizing the galaxy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by quokkapox ( 847798 ) <quokkapox@gmail.com> on Saturday January 21, 2006 @03:56PM (#14527682)
    Living spaceships seem like a good way to colonize the rest of our galaxy. The current generation of robotic metal boxes won't get us there.

    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 [wikipedia.org] in sci-fi for decades.

    • If we want to travel beyond our solar system, we ought to build something like Earth, only smaller.

      Hmm.. you mean like Mars?

    • um...

      Wait a sec the earth is a satellite of the sun, not a spaceship. It is like it is because it tends to stay a relatively constant distance from the Sun (climate) and because it is the size that it is (gravity) (among other things of course, like chemical composition and age)

      Maybe we should strap rockets to the earth and the sun and just take off into the cosmos.

      (i can't believe i felt compelled to write this - am i stating the obvious or missing the point. Doh, no idea)
    • >The current generation of robotic metal boxes won't get us there

      You can picture a spacecraft as acting like a living system. It consumes food (fuel), it has intelligence (programming), it can be trained (remote control), etc. How switching to some organic based system is going to help is beyond me. Where's the propulsion going to come from? Whats it going to eat? What happens in case of a contamination?

      Would you rather drive somewhere or ride a horse there?

    • Isn't the Earth itself just a big living spaceship?

      Uhh, no. The solar system is the big living spaceship. The Earth wouldn't be "living" at all if seperated from The Sun for a while.

      If we want to travel beyond our solar system, we ought to build something like Earth, only smaller.

      Much smaller, and its gravity wouldn't be enough to prevent the atmosphere from escaping into space.

      At it's current size, it's of course far too unweildy to be a very useful space-ship...

      The "giant rock" spaceship isn't an entire

  • If only we could just heal Slashdot's DUPE problem (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @04:11PM (#14527754) Homepage
    http://slashdot.org/science/01/02/15/041205.shtml [slashdot.org]

    And my, what an old dupe it is!

  • After a minor auto-repair (Score:3, Funny)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @04:12PM (#14527765) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • More like a self-sealing fuel tanks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @04:19PM (#14527794) Homepage
    Self-sealing aircraft fuel tanks [wikipedia.org] date back to WWII. This is a comparable level of self-repair: a material that expands to fill and seal gaps.

  • Oh shit... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Ostien ( 893052 )
    Will we now have to be assimilated?

  • "Fact?" (Score:4, Informative)

    by LMariachi ( 86077 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @04:28PM (#14527839) Journal
    citing the fact that we don't glue ourselves together when we nick ourselves

    I'm not sure if they're trying to say that our bodies don't naturally [fi.edu] glue themselves back together or that we don't apply glue [kk.org] to cuts, but either way, they're wrong.

    • 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 only that, but they are, in fact, proposing that the ship glue itself back together. The blurb is a poorly chosen edit of an already rather vague statement by a scientist whose first language is probably german.What the blurb fails to get across is the important point that we don't glue ourselves together manually.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • or that we don't apply glue to cuts, but either way, they're wrong.

      The latter. I agree it was poorly worded, but not wrong.

      Your link is off-topic, which is why you are wrong. They said "when we nick ourselves" not "when we rip off limbs" or "rip large chunks of skin away".

      It is referring to the fact that your body develops scabs, and heals itself, as opposed to just remaining damaged until somebody comes along and fixes your cuts in the case of machines (or anemics).

  • 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...

  • Porsche (Score:4, Funny)

    by david duncan scott ( 206421 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @04:29PM (#14527845)
    I remember my brother-in-law talking about the paint on his new Porsche. It had an under-layer, he explained, that oxidized when exposed to air, protecting the metal in some fashion.

    "That's the Germans for you," he said. "Everything they make turns into something else in case there's a war..."

    • Re:Porsche (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Reminds me of a Frasier's episode, where Niles' oven didn't work:
          Niles: ... My Gaggenau is German-engineered.
                        It probably needs more power than my building's old wiring can
                        give it.
        Martin: Leave it to the Germans. Even their appliances crave power.
  • they found the solution to drunk space probe drivers. Minor crash? No problem. And you don't get charged with DUI.
  • 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:
  • What are the chances evaporated resin and hardener are going to condense on nearby objects like camera lenses? And it won't be easy to bake the stuff off either.

  • Bioships (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gihan_ripper ( 785510 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @04:55PM (#14527981) Homepage

    Perhaps this is the first step towards bioships, à la species 8472 [wikipedia.org]? 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.

  • ...citing the fact that we don't glue ourselves together when we nick ourselves [...] By replacing a few of the fibers in the resinous material that make up a spacecraft's skin with hollow fibers containing adhesive

    Rather than have the spacecraft glue itself, let's have the spacecraft ... uh ... glue itself?

    Cells reproduce. To bring that technology to spacecraft, the spacecraft would either have to be biologically engineered or constructed solely (the self-healing part, anyway) of a mass of nanomachines

  • I. P. Freely (Score:2, Insightful)

    by teefaf ( 942041 )
    Has no-one else noticed that one of the University of Bristol academics involved in the Study is called "Dr. I. Bond"?

    And they're using adhesives to mimick the way our skin heals itself?

  • Now in space station sized (Score:4, Funny)

    by Belseth ( 835595 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @05:35PM (#14528157)
    "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."

  • How would it work? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jamesh ( 87723 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @06:12PM (#14528400)
    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....
  • Just use all this space debris. Two problems solved at once...
  • Am I the only one thinking of Lexx [lexxfanclub.org]?
  • Or you could always just re-route life support through the ancillary adjunct backup processor of the brussard collector's hyperdyne relay.

    That should give you plenty of time to reach the next starbase.

  • they already have fiberglass that does this kind of thing. I has adhesive embedded in the fibers to fix itself.

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