Comments on: … I meant, Stardust “@” Home

By: Nomad

Nomad — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:23:02 +0000

Could areogel be filled with helium? I am looking to construct Skycity in the near future. Actually a just hotel and restaurant at the mid-point to serve passengers on the space elevator.

By: Anuj

Anuj — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:15:58 +0000

If the aerogel was unable to absorb the impact from being dropped onto a patio floor, I don’t think it will be able to absorb the impact from a bullet.

By: Fesstizio

Fesstizio — Tue, 22 May 2007 23:31:47 +0000

he he he ! that stuff is frekin sweet one qustion (I got this info of Nova) if it can stop things going 6 times that is right 6 times faster then a bullet why arnt we using this stuff to make a body armor for our soilders or something like that. it is light enough and if you coat it with something to keep it from shattering you got something good going here.

By: ChrisJ

ChrisJ — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:32:16 +0000

You can mold aerogel AND it is rigid and will break if bent. Most aerogels are rigid and will break when you try to bend them. There are a few flexible ones that have been reinforced with a flexible polymer but their flexibility is probably goverened by the polymer rather than the silica backbone.

Aerogels are made by a sol gel process, which means that the components start out in liquid form and then the react to form the solid. If you pour the sol into a mold it takes the shape of the mold as it gels. The resulting piece isn’t flexible but it is in the shape of the mold.

You can make any arbitrary shape that you want as long as you can get it out of the mold. Of course, if you get it too thick you’ll have a hard time getting it processed. Liquids don’t flow through the gel so washing the unused reactants out is done by immersing the gel in solvent and allowing diffusion to pull stuff out of the gel. If you make too thick of a piece it takes forever to wash.

By: Jay Dogg

Jay Dogg — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 04:31:14 +0000

can you mold the aerogel or is it totally rigid and will break if bent?

By: Blakut

Blakut — Mon, 15 May 2006 13:15:10 +0000

I preregistered myself, i can’t wait to begin..!

“It is a really good thermal insulator but it is hard to use as insulation because it is so fragile.”

You could use smaller chunks of aerogel placed in a soft er (and fuzzy) material in order to obtain a good insulator.

By: ChrisJ

ChrisJ — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 12:29:07 +0000

Actually, aerogel was invented a long time ago, but not by either JPL or Lawrence Berkeley (who has a really nice site with a lot of details including history at http://eetd.lbl.gov/ECS/aerogels/satoc.htm ) although both places have worked on it.

Remember that this stuff is about 95% void volume – that is, only about 5% of the volume is silica – the rest is empty space, typically filled with air. It is an open-cell material so you can remove the air and it becomes an even better insulator.

It is a really good thermal insulator but it is hard to use as insulation because it is so fragile. There are people at NASA Glenn (where I’m from) and the University of Missouri that have developed a much stronger version. As usual, there is no free lunch, so you sacrifice some of the desirable properties a little to get the strength increase, although in this case you gain strength much faster than you increase density.