Kiwi scientists from Canterbury University are helping NASA design a new futuristic aircraft that will get astronauts to space without the aid of a huge rocket to get them there. Associate professor Susan Krumdieck, an engineer who is part of the team, says they are help to design a heat-shield for the craft.
She says they are rising material at a "nano-crystalline scale onto the outside of the next generation hyper-sonic space vehicle". Krumdieck told TV ONE's Breakfast programme that the materials are likely to be made of ceramic, as the material does not corrode and is able to stand very high temperatures and that makes it wonderful in using it to keep the outside of the new spacecraft.
But she says the ceramic cann’t be painted or glazed onto the craft, like on a coffee cup."It has to be grown, molecule at a time and that's the process I am developing," Krumdieck says.Describing the process as very similar to cooking in the kitchen, she says there are subtle differences to how many atoms of different things they can put in to create the wonderful heat-shield.
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