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Darth Fluffy

The coolest thing I've seen in a while.

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Super Wood.

I am continually amazed at things in Star Trek TOS that looked ludicrous when it first aired, but are already possibilities. One such thing appeared in the animated series that aired shortly after TOS was cancelled. In one episode, the Enterprise gets trapped in a deep space Sargasso Sea; there are numerous trapped ships, one of which is a hated Klingon warship trapped. They are forced to cooperate in order to leave. (Most of the ships have been there for ages, and the crews are presumably dead.)

I read a short story version of this episode, and one of the derelict ships is described as "made of wood". This was painful to read, at the time. Sorry, author, my apologies, it appears wooden spacecraft are a distinct possibility.

Oh, yeah, the transparent wood described in the article could pretty much fill in for Scotty's transparent aluminum.

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I can see it

An orbital/asteroid belt manufacturing facility which, while obtaining most of its energy by solar power, still produces a excessive amount of CO2 and additional noxious gasses through other industrial processes (ie those darn humans who run the place)
To mitigate this, a large greenhouse grows the trees which are then processed into the Super Wood for additional construction

These trees will almost certainly be genetically modified, when compared to their Earthbound ancestral species
Should the trees be maximized for growth and thus wood production?
Or should they perform double duty and produce fruit, nuts, edible seeds, and/or other arboreal byproducts?

Edit

A possible conflict occurs to me
Vermont leads an all out negative advertising campaign trying to convince the world that Maple Syrup from Outer Space is not safe or delicious

Edited by Pharaoh RutinTutin
Oops

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Such a material’s suitability for outer space use depends upon the flight conditions. For example, I do not think that it would be able to endure the heat of atmospheric entry without a substantial heat shield over it—but then again, aluminum would also melt at those temperatures as well, and we use that for spacecraft.

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7 hours ago, ijuin said:

Such a material’s suitability for outer space use depends upon the flight conditions. For example, I do not think that it would be able to endure the heat of atmospheric entry without a substantial heat shield over it

True

But for structures intended to remain in space, and which are expected/designed to disintegrate on atmospheric entry, this could be a very good thing

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11 hours ago, ijuin said:

Such a material’s suitability for outer space use depends upon the flight conditions. For example, I do not think that it would be able to endure the heat of atmospheric entry without a substantial heat shield over it—but then again, aluminum would also melt at those temperatures as well, and we use that for spacecraft.

I was surprised to read fairly recently, within the last year, that carbon (some allotrope) had the highest melting point of all elements. I have always thought it was tungsten (aka wolfram). In space it could do quite well, but for reentry, that it oxidizes is a negative. But then again, so does nearly everything else.

In any case, reentry generally requires an ablative material. I don't know what we use now, maybe it's already carbon based. It probably could be.

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14 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

I can see it

An orbital/asteroid belt manufacturing facility which, while obtaining most of its energy by solar power, still produces a excessive amount of CO2 and additional noxious gasses through other industrial processes (ie those darn humans who run the place)
To mitigate this, a large greenhouse grows the trees which are then processed into the Super Wood for additional construction

These trees will almost certainly be genetically modified, when compared to their Earthbound ancestral species
Should the trees be maximized for growth and thus wood production?
Or should they perform double duty and produce fruit, nuts, edible seeds, and/or other arboreal byproducts?

Edit

A possible conflict occurs to me
Vermont leads an all out negative advertising campaign trying to convince the world that Maple Syrup from Outer Space is not safe or delicious

Green plants for oxygen recovery and food are already a given, eventually, once someone with an aggressive enough space agenda decides they need a permanent presence. This is gravy.

Tree species optimization is likely already being considered. If it works like paper production, speed of growth will dominate and pines are likely. Might have something to do with less lignin content, I don't know.

I borrowed a woodworking book from the library once that was almost entirely focused on the toxicity of different woods and their dust; not exotic stay away from this tree types, but stuff a normal woodworker might encounter. What struck me as odd was that this was fairly important information, and this is the first I'd ever heard of it. I don't think most woodworkers nor even distributors are aware of it, and I've never seen it documented any where else.

Relative lignin content strikes me as similar. Some few folks in paper production are probably aware of it, but I'm guessing that's about it. Yet, for this super wood material, it could be a significant factor, not just cost, but environmental impact, or use of scarce materials in space.

 

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1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

In any case, reentry generally requires an ablative material. I don't know what we use now, maybe it's already carbon based. It probably could be.

The Space Shuttles used Reinforced Carbon-Carbon, but it was applied in tile form with some form of wading between them which, as we know from the Columbia accident, made it easy to break off in the event something impacted against it.  SpaceX currently uses PICA X as their thermal ablative material on the Dragon capsules.

 

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1 minute ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Use the most expendable ablative armour in the universe
Undergraduate TAs and Interns

I'm shocked that you would suggest such a thing.Surely there's a lawyer joke in there somewhere.

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On 12/14/2019 at 10:23 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

Surely there's a lawyer joke in there somewhere

Nothing against the incineration of lawyers, but the billable hours that accumulate while awaiting their demise in a glorious fireball is more than I can afford

And Don't Call Me Shirley!

Edited by Pharaoh RutinTutin
Oops

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On 12/13/2019 at 3:17 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

Super Wood.

I read a short story version of this episode, and one of the derelict ships is described as "made of wood". This was painful to read, at the time. Sorry, author, my apologies, it appears wooden spacecraft are a distinct possibility.

Or a wooden time/space ship?

 

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I get a broken link; tried pasting the C8tul38ChUl&t=0m57s, then just the C8tul38ChUl&t, got Link not available. I think it is blocked in the US, maybe for copyright?

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On 12/13/2019 at 10:17 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

Oh, yeah, the transparent wood described in the article could pretty much fill in for Scotty's transparent aluminum.

Actually we've come pretty close to having transparent aluminium. The two materials that I know of that comes close are sapphires and aluminum oxynitride. Zaphire is simply said aluminium oxide in crystal form (α-Al2O3), while aluminum oxynitride is a ceramic composed of aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen.

A sapphire can be grown to the desired size and then cut into panes that are polished to the desired surface finish. The drawback is that this is expensive to grow, and that machining sapphire requires expensive tooling as it is the third hardest material known, 9 on the Mohs scale after diamond at 10 and moissanite at 9.5. (had to look up moissanite, can't remember hearing about that in school)

Sapphire has been used to make windows for fighting vehicles as it has excellent optical properties and is very resistant to bullets and abrasion from sand.

Aluminum oxynitride is a material that got nicknamed transparent aluminum but is marketed under the name ALON. The material can be formed using ceramic powder processing techniques and can be formed into just about any desired shape. ALON can be used as a replacement for traditional bulletproof glass, making them less than half as thick and much lighter than a traditional glas laminate.

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4 hours ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

Actually we've come pretty close to having transparent aluminium. The two materials that I know of that comes close are sapphires and aluminum oxynitride. Zaphire is simply said aluminium oxide in crystal form (α-Al2O3), while aluminum oxynitride is a ceramic composed of aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen.

A sapphire can be grown to the desired size and then cut into panes that are polished to the desired surface finish. The drawback is that this is expensive to grow, and that machining sapphire requires expensive tooling as it is the third hardest material known, 9 on the Mohs scale after diamond at 10 and moissanite at 9.5. (had to look up moissanite, can't remember hearing about that in school)

Sapphire has been used to make windows for fighting vehicles as it has excellent optical properties and is very resistant to bullets and abrasion from sand.

Aluminum oxynitride is a material that got nicknamed transparent aluminum but is marketed under the name ALON. The material can be formed using ceramic powder processing techniques and can be formed into just about any desired shape. ALON can be used as a replacement for traditional bulletproof glass, making them less than half as thick and much lighter than a traditional glas laminate.

I never got the impression that Scotty was talking about an aluminum compound. I don't know if that's canon. Sapphire is hardly novel, as you pointed out; it's used in engineering applications and has been know for centuries. I also did not get the impression that he was talking about extremely thin sheets of aluminum, nor aluminum screen. I did understand him to mean transparent at optical frequencies, not at, say gamma wavelengths, which would be a given.

He seemed to be talking about an allotrope of pure aluminum, or possibly an alloy that was primarily aluminum, like steel is primarily iron. Also, from the use in the whale movie to make a holding tank, it was stable at standard temperature and pressure (STP). It was clearly intended to be fictional in context; I would stop short of stating it is impossible, though.

Sapphire is odd. Hard generally means brittle as well. While softer than diamond, sapphire is among the hardest materials we have, but it is also fairly tough. Hence the use in tank optics.

 

 

 

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