Self Healing Space Crafts.

[Schwarz]

As all of you know spaceships aren't given.
They are expensive and hard to repair.
Researchers at the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Bristol might have made the discovery of the century.
Based on how human skin heal itself, hollow microfibres will seep liquid adhesive if a puncture occures
This was done by replacing a small percent of the fibres running through a resinous composite material with hollow fibres that contain adhesive materials.
http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/258_self-repair.jpg

Here's an exemple.
When you hurt yourself or cut yourself you have a self healing mechanism that makes your blood harden to form a protective seal for new skin to regenerate underneath.

- Schwarz

[BlackStar]

Funny how scientists keep "discovering" what science fiction writers have been dreaming up for years.

While I like this approach, it is still only useful on small punctures. To fill even a dime size hole would require some amazing adhesives or other "scar" forming material that would have to expand and harden almost instantiously before either boiling away into space or blown out by the evacuating cabin pressure. You need something like "Great Stuff" - the expanding polyurethane foam - to fill the gap quickly.

[Schwarz]

Heh.
Well I mean its a start im looking foward to like 20 years from now.

[BlackStar]

Oh, don't take me too seriously on this subject. I've been dreaming up new hull designs for space exploration for years and watching how composite materials are becoming the likely skin of future crafts.

The self-healing hull has been a favorite experiment in thought for some time and I think we need more "science fiction" in our space program. 20 year old technology in the the Space Shuttle just isn't going to get us very far.