self healing composite??

Sorry if thisis in the wrong forum but I found this article today and thought it to be very interesting! Its apparently an article describing a "Self-healing" material that could be used to make bridges and planes and other things made of composite materials more safe. To me the appications of this are astounding..imagine what it could mean for space travel and exploration? In some cases the material was able to return the objects tensile strength back to 100%..a full recovery! here is the link I found..Im just curious if anyone else has heard of this research going on and what other applications might come from this.

technology.newscientist.com...

I remember hearing about this years ago. I wonder how close this technology is to being used practically.