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National Science Foundation is studying Grecian urns to make better spacecraft
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Popular Science:
Discovery's Heat Shield In this file image, space shuttle Discovery does a belly flip for the ISS, so astronauts on the station
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Upon examining a piece of Attic pottery, certain words may come to mind: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” — and some would have you believe that is all you need to know here on Earth. But in space, you need to know a bit more. Like “how did this thing last so long?” Understanding how a Grecian urn survives for 2,500 years could yield improved ceramics — not for leaf-fringed scenes of deities or mortals, but for the sake of heat shields, and therefore safer astronauts.
Ancient Greek pottery remains quite robust, with perhaps 100,000 vases surviving two and a half millennia after their creation. Now the National Science Foundation would like to uncover the secrets kept by these foster children of silence and slow time.
Ceramics are vital to protecting spacecraft from the normal temperatures of Earth, the deep freeze of space, and the searing heat of reentry. Not many substances can handle the whole spectrum of stresses quite so well.
Read the whole story: Popular Science
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