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Comments (18)
- shmeeedPart of my job is to keep siloxanes out of a complex, multi-step, multi-sub-contracted manufacturing process. A supplier change that should have been a simple affair has cost us several kilobucks in analyses in the past months. I hate the stuff.
- s0rceSiloxanes contaminate everything. We routinely see them on various surfaces when doing X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
- RobotToasterI'm sceptical of the claim that they couldn't eliminate the majority of them from stuff that's shipped up to the ISS. Even if it meant making special space certified hair conditioner.
- RobotToaster> while a further 7,000 kilograms of treated urine were sitting in orbital storage tanks, waiting to be processed.Is that a record for the biggest piss bottle ever made?
- sprinkly-dustI hope to see these seemingly mundane unknown unknowns raised in space travel centered hard science fiction. I think The Martian and Seveneves almost captured these but not quite.
- adolphAn interesting substory that is simultaneously reminiscent of the Fogbank story and how Hayek's "curious task" is much more broadly applicable: There is a good cautionary tale here from the Space Shuttle era. That vehicle had heat resistant tiles that had to be attached to the aluminum belly of the orbiter. A special cloth had been certified for wiping the aluminum clean before applying the primer that securely bonded the tiles to the metal. After years of uneventful use, tile engineers discovered that new replacement tiles were no longer curing properly. A careful investigation revealed that the supplier of that special cloth had changed the lubricant used in the machine that sews its hem. Minute amounts of the lubricant were being deposited on the stitching, and enough of that residue was getting on the aluminum skin to prevent the tile adhesive from curing properly.