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More Science News |
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| October 30, 1998: Later today John Glenn will flick a switch that could boost the computer industry, lower home heating bills, and reduce global warming. Fifteen minutes later, he's scheduled to go to sleep. Glenn is renowned for his cool demeanor so he probably won't have trouble sleeping so soon after possibly changing the world. It's all in a day's work. |
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Glenn's momentous switch will activate the STS-95 aerogel experiment,
a first attempt to manufacture aerogel in low gravity aboard
the space shuttle. Aerogel is a remarkable space-age substance
that has excited scientists and entrepreneurs alike. In the "Technology
to Watch" section of Fortune Magazine, the use of aerogels
was cited for more than 800 different product applications ranging
from satellites to surfboards. It's the lightest known solid,
so much akin to air that it's sometimes called "frozen smoke,"
yet it's astonishingly strong. A human-sized block of aerogel
weighs only one pound but can support the weight of a small automobile.
Its insulating properties are remarkable -- A single one-inch
window pane of aerogel is equivalent to the insulation provided
by 20 to 30 panes of normal glass. Indeed, aerogel would make a great window except for one detail: it's hard to see through. Aerogel made on Earth is permeated with tiny, irregular pores that make aerogel partially opaque. There is evidence that the irregularities are diminished when aerogel is manufactured in weightless conditions, and that's what Glenn and the other astronauts will try to do tonight. |
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The aerogel experiment consists of a set of 16 pairs of syringes joined at the nozzles. When John Glenn activates the switch, battery powered motor drives will begin to push and pull the syringe pistons until a barrier breaks. The two solutions are mixed for a preset number of cycles, then the experiment stops automatically. The experiment creates a silicon dioxide gel that is later returned to Earth for supercritical drying as an aerogel. |
| If aerogel could be made transparent it could revolutionize household windows. But that's not all. Aerogel also has an important role to play in space exploration, it could fuel new growth in the computer industry, and it may help reduce carbon dioxide emissions before they reach the atmosphere. |
Aerogel in Space
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Aerogel will also be used during the NASA Stardust mission to
capture and return dust particles from a comet. The Stardust
spacecraft is scheduled to launch in February 1999, and it will
rendezvous with comet Wild-2 in January, 2004. 
To collect the particles from the comet without damaging them,
STARDUST will use an aerogel-based collector, pictured right.
When a particle hits the aerogel, it buries itself in the material,
creating a carrot-shaped track up to 200 times its own length,
as it slows down and comes to a stop - like an airplane setting
down on a runway and braking to reduce its speed gradually. Since
aerogel is mostly transparent - sometimes called blue smoke -
scientists will use these tracks to find the tiny particles.
The track is largest at the point of entry, and the particle
can be collected intact at the point of the cone. The distinctive
shape of the cone will tell scientists the particle's direction
of incidence, and allow them to discriminate between cometary
and interstellar dust grains. |
Aerogel Supercomputers?It is widely thought that the future of the computing industry relies in large part on new chip materials, such as aerogel, to maintain the growth of computing speed, sometimes called Moore's law. Moore's law, named after the former CEO of Intel, states that the computing power of chip manufacturing doubles every 18 months. Over the next decade, this would translate the current state of the art (300 MHz) desktop PC into a whopping 24 GHz machine! The challenge to maintaining Moore's law down to molecular scale turns out not to hinge on smaller transistors but on better ways to keep the interconnecting wires from shorting across the narrow dividing space between them. That's where aerogel, as the best solid dielectric ever created, may be the secret for next generation growth.
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Aerogel and the EnvironmentBy reducing home heating costs aerogel could reduce global energy needs and minimize the pollutants that inevitably come with energy production. Science Magazine (1998) listed next-generation window technology as a critical point in the US obligations to meet its international global warming commitments prescribed by the late 1997 Kyoto Conference resolutions. The Kyoto Conference set international standards for a 5-10% cut in carbon budgets and this is considered impossible by some without triggering an economic recession. Under the agreement, carbon percentage allotments are proposed as tradable items and can be bought by industrialized countries from less industrialized societies, in effect a stock market trading on smog. |
 New technology
could offer a way out. As an example, the December 1997 issue
of Today's Homeowner magazine listed NASA aerogel research ("Super
Stuff") in its cover story entitled "Best New Products
for 1998." The article concludes: "The potential market
for a clear aerogel is enormous, considering that window heat
loss accounts for up to 30 percent of energy lost from a home.
A well-designed aerogel window could lower heating and cooling
costs by a comparable figure...". |
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Reduced industrial waste is another long-term target of aerogel
research. Not only is aerogel of scientific interest to reduce
the energy load, but also to capture waste and polluting gases
before they reach the atmosphere. The industrial group, The Attia
Applied Science, Incorporated (TAASI), concluded in 1996: "The
market for the aerogel absorbents is potentially vast. In principle,
wherever alcohol and fossil fuels are used, aerogel absorbents
could capture waste gases before they are emitted into the atmosphere."
Indeed the future of aerogel seems wide open, but much of it depends on the STS-95 experiment, scheduled to begin later tonight around 8:30 pm EST. By flipping one small switch John Glenn may be making history, yet again. |
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NASA Stardust
Mission Aerogel Page - learn how aerogel will be used to
return samples from a comet More Space Science Headlines - NASA research on the web Life and Microgravity programmatic information from NASA headquarters. |
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a mail message every time we post a new story!!!More  Headlinesreturn to Space Science News Home Author: Dr.
David Noever ; Dr.
Tony Phillips |
As the world's lightest solid,
aerogel can save significant weight on future space vehicles.
As one example, NASA considered equipping the Mars rover with
solid aerogel tires. Sojourner eventually blasted off with more
conventional wheels, but aerogel was used as an insulator to
keep the Rover warm on its long journey to Mars and after it
arrived on chilly minus100 degree Martian nights.
