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Comment Threads

• Unholyguy commented on The sky's gone dark
  God I hate autocorrect...
• Andreas Vox commented on The sky's gone dark
  If there was a god s/he'd kill autocorrrect....
• Andreas Vox commented on The sky's gone dark
  Maybe better not use foam like this. I don't think there's currently any known material that can absorb high speed particles without disintegrating itself. Maybe a wad of Kevlar....
• Heteromeles commented on The sky's gone dark
  You've got to look up Whipple shields. Also the Stardust mission, which did use aerogel to capture grains coming off a comet. It's counterintuitive, but if a speeding speck of debris is likely to become a ball of plasma when it hits anything, then putting just a wisp of matter in its path can be better than putting a heavy sheet of matter. You get the same ball of plasma either way, but you don't get the structural disruption in something that doesn't have much structure to disrupt, like an aerogel or a Whipple shield) (vs. say battleship armor), nor...
• Greg. Tingey commented on The sky's gone dark
  Except skylon IS getting a drip-feed of guvmint money - as we saw at LonCon last year .......