From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Sun Feb 02 2003 - 14:36:39 MST
Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
> 2. I was reading a suggested reason for the disaster today. One
> possibility was the peeling of the "thermal protective tiles" on the
> left wing of the shuttle. My concern is that we are still using, from a
> materials-science point of view, nomex or nextel tiles.
Which reminds me. I was talking to my dad about this earlier today, and
he mentioned that the white tiles used for the shuttle's upper body
would make great housing material except for the cost: excellent
insulators, totally fire and termite proof, strength to weight ratios
far more than adequate for a typical house, et cetera and so forth. The
only problem would be cost - which, of course, is often a killer for
this kind of thing. But he was wondering if, perhaps, getting some
contractors hooked on using these for housing materials would drive the
point down, such that making them for the occasional spaceship would be
a cheap custom job rather than the elaborate undertaking it presently
seems to be. (Then again, everything at NASA seems to be an elaborate
undertaking, so maybe it's not the material's fault.) Can anyone here
with any experience in this comment on this possibility?
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