Stirling Westrup wrote:
> I'm replying to my own reply, since it suddenly occured to me that tensile
> strength per unit density is exactly the WRONG units to use. This would
> cause us to use (for example) a 1km thick strand of steel foam in
> preference to a 1m thick strand of solid steel, because they had similar
> tensile strengths, but one was much less dense.
I beg to differ, Stirling. The steel foam would lose tensile strength in
proportion to its density. Since it doesnt matter the volume of the
space cable, there is no preference between steel and aluminum
for instance. Aluminum is approximately a third the density of steel
but its tensile strength is also about a third. I shall wait to post this
until I see if Doug Jones has already jumped on this. {8^D
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:39 MDT