hey there

Many of you probably know about aerogel. It was completelly new to me when I found it on wikipedia last week. But I don't know how many of you have ever heard of silica nanofoam...

However these two materials offer many new options in designing aircraft... As you know the density of the air is 1.2 mg/cm3. The density of aluminium is 2.7 g/cm3 and density of titanium is 4.1 g/cm3. It means that airframe made of aerogel would be at least 2000 times lighter than today's usual airframes... In wikipedia article you have a photo of a 2g piece of aerogel supporting 2.5 kg brick. That means that it maybe can't sustain pressures at high supersonic speeds, but it definitelly would sustain pressure at high subsonic speeds... Aerogel is also one of the best (in guinness book listed as the best) heat insulator. Wouldn't use of such a material greatly affect the range and fuel consumption of b-2 bomber-like aircraft??

But that's not all... The next material is called SILICA NANOFOAM...it has a density of 1.0 mg/cm3, which makes it LIGHTER THAN AIR!! This material is still only in labs, but it offers you making a solid aircraft that is lighter than air: can hover without consupting any fuel, can be easily accelerated, ... But eventhough it's still just in labs, many times in history something that was only just in labs in white world could be at the same time in operational use in black wolrd... The only problem you have to solve is fuel, 'cause you can't have fuel tanks (they weight too much).. but you can have solar cells... you would have to have 1000m3 to support 2 tons of equipment... it's not that much...it's 10x25x4 meters...

Just imagine phoenix lights, UFO over europe, which could hover and accelerate extremely rapidly... it could all be done with such materials...

Does anyone have any more info??any more pros?? any contras??

Got any relevant links?

This all sounds very interesting. Never heard of it before.

Linkage, please. Links, links, links.

I'm sure they are either working on or have super light weight craft. More then likely unmanned craft. I would guess it has more to do with surveillance then warfare (bomb delivery).

Somebody said if I had any links.... I think the wikipedia link to aerogel was allready posted, while there isn't much about silica nanofoam.... just tipe it into google, but you only get some university pages with little info...

As for lightness of this material... You were speaking about buoyancy and that it's lighter than air at sea level, but not on altitude, ... Since i'm not a native speaker, i didn't really understand you... why wouldn't it be lighter than air?? of course it isn't on a big altitude, but at sea level??

A vacuum would be the most buoyant 'thing' of all and the problem that kills it is the weight of the vessel containing it which has to be strong enough to survive the huge differential pressure without allowing any of the external medium (air in this case) to enter the vacuum. Sounds like this is mighty close to achieving that goal of a strong lighter than air construction material.

I'd even settle for neutral buoyancy at anything above sea level as a real breakthrough.

If that gel could be made to be more clear or transparent then a matrix of liquid crystals could produce a real 3d holographic tv.

Hmm Lighter than Air..

Does the TR-3B count? Not lighter than air but it does have a special device that can reduce it's mass by as much as 89% back in 98, or perhaps today they can reduce it to 100%

There is some speculation to if the TR-3B actually exist.. if it does not then I guess it really would be lighter than air!

[edit on 11-11-2009 by JohnPhoenix]

good catch on all of this... one thing you guys should know about aerogel though is it's not very resilient... building an aircraft out of it would be touch and go at best.

I haven't looked into seagel or silicon nanogel awesome catch on those ones.

So technically it has a lesser density then air?

Lighter then air usually means it will float or rise, but we're not seeing this here. The video of the seagel shows it sitting on surfaces and not rising.

Despite buoyancy, we also have the problem if gravity. No one seems to be mentioning that gravity is the reason this does not float away, but stays on a surface. No matter how light it is as matter, any density will be effected by gravity.

Originally posted by Seiko
So technically it has a lesser density then air?

Lighter then air usually means it will float or rise, but we're not seeing this here. The video of the seagel shows it sitting on surfaces and not rising.

Despite buoyancy, we also have the problem if gravity. No one seems to be mentioning that gravity is the reason this does not float away, but stays on a surface. No matter how light it is as matter, any density will be effected by gravity.

It shows it doing some pretty weird stuff inside the aquarium-like thing. But it's not clear why it's in an aquarium-like thing or why it's not falling or rising but sort of oscillating.

What buoyancy means is that something floats despite the fact of gravity. Everything has density, but if everything always fell due to gravity then there would be no need for the concept of buoyancy. Similarly to how a boat can float on top of water, something that's lighter than air (like a helium balloon) floats in air.

I think the reason the seagel seemed to rest on his hand is probably stickiness.