Aerogels have been in development and used for quite some time. With innovations being reported in this new technology, this new material’s usefulness has increased beyond comprehension. For those who have no idea what an Aerogel is, it is an extremely low-density solid that created after extracting liquid from a gel through a sophisticated process called supercritical drying. Although the superlight material is amazing, it is left brittle due to the use of silica as a component. Now with latest research spanning years, NASA and several other entities at the same time time have successfully created an altogether new material called Airloy.
The development of new materials is paramount to the development of new designs and pushing the boundaries of Science further. For example, we wouldn’t have had an industrial revolution in the world without the high-quality cheap steel we see everywhere. We couldn’t have had the IT revolution without the development of semiconductors and chips. Each new groundbreaking material changes the world forever and the Airloy has the potential to do just that. It combines the durability and hardness of regular plastics with ultra-lightweight insulating properties of aerogels. Their density is as low as 0.01 to 0.9 grams per cubic centimeter. To put that into perspective, water has a density of 1 gram per cubic centimeter. So this new material is over a hundred times lighter than water itself. It may well be possible to engineer it to handle an excess of 20,000 times their own weight. Here is the difference between aerogels and Airloys.
The insulating properties of this material are baffling scientists and engineers are thinking about their practical usage in light of that. Not only do they insulate heat, but they also insulate sound. It is calculated to be 100-1000 times better in properties than any known material right now. Reckon it would be amazing to have this cool material on a spaceship?
