"Glassy" steel..

Well I found this rather interesting, perhaps it has spacefaring usefulness, no?
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000092000024245503000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=Yes

Unfortunately, that's an abstract, but note the part about 'thermal stability'.

They added small quantities of yttrium atoms to iron alloy, disrupting the normal crystalline atomic structure of steel into a more chaotic arrangement which proves to be much stronger and heat resistant.

Whoa.. for a minute there I thought the San Francisco engineer with the old Mac had finally figured out Scotty's "Transparent Aluminum" formula.

This stuff does look like a possibly good bet for a metalic heatshield. There have been metallic headshield designs before, most notable for atomic things that go boom in the night, but most of them involved very brittle and expensive alloys and had a lot of mass.

http://liquidmetal.com/

It's glass, it's metal, no, it's LiquidMetal: Metal spheres that bounce better than superballs.

Just wait until these guys set up a small lab in orbit.

'Nuff said.

This seems to be ready now:

Transparent Aluminum
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=33827
http://www.livescience.com/technology/0 ... glass.html

Misc.
Supercamera
http://www.gigapxl.org/technology.htm

Cool site
http://www.myphysicslab.com
4D art
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/time-05j.html

Asteroids as weapons
http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1 ... 9.appc.pdf

This seems interesting:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/materials-05zx.html

Or this:
http://optics.org/articles/news/10/3/10/1
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123012131

Under www.wissenschaft-online.de - the Internet-version of the german pendant of Scientific American - there is an article today saying that it is possible to establish a permanent chaos of the atoms of metals.

Unfortunately I can't access the whole article since I don't have an abonnement.

May be that it has to be understood as transparent metals - and means the possibility of Scotty's transparent aluminum also.

This together with bad_astra's post reminds me to the chaotical movement of atoms displayed on the screen of the PC Scotty was looking at in that Star Trek-movie.

What about it?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

EDIT: Randomly I had another look onto the title of the artcile and recognized that the subtitle says "Glas aus monoatomaren metallischen Flüssigkeiten" - glas made of monoatomic metalic liquids.

I might use these steels as spray-on liners. Some of these glassy steels can be brittle if too pure--they need a little carbon re-added--the carbon acts much like re-bar in concrete

Here is a thought. Take CFD, find those spots/patterns with the most heating, and spry the materials on there. Compress with hydraulics--repeat. Use the Verity weld anaysis for other parts of the airframe.