Spacecraft construction materials

The use of dirty commercial fuels plus C02-containing air—as opposed to pure hydrogen and pure oxygen used on spacecraft—made the useful life of fuel cell systems (using construction materials commercially available at the time) too short for economical operation. 

Almost every type of material used in spacecraft construction was on board glasses for optical instruments, solar arrays, thermal control coatings, ceramics, metals, plastic films, bulk resins, composites, paints, adhesives, lubricants and rubbers. Their examination will provide designers with a rich harvest of data which could not be obtained from any simulation test on Earth. This data will be extremely useful for selecting materials for spacecraft intended to spend 30 or more years in orbit, such as the Freedom Space Station. 

Smith, Jr., J. G Smith, T. WUUams, M. Youngquist, R. and Mendell, W., Potential polymeric sphere construction materials for a spacecraft electrostatic shield, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681, NASA/TM-2006-214302. 

Compositions are also important in the construction of objects to both propel material into outer space and exist there. Because of the large amount of fuel required to propel spacecraft into outer space, weight reduction, offered by composites, is essential. The polymeric nature of composites also makes it an ideal material to resist degradation caused by the vacuum of outer space. 

Atomic oxygen is a highly reactive species that can pose serious problems for spacecraft in low Earth orbit due to degradation of materials of construction. In the case of siloxane elastomers and coatings88,89, it has been shown that surface oxidation occurs to give a silica layer which then protects the bulk material from further oxidation, with the result that little loss of physical properties occurs. 

Today with the advance of structural and high temperature adhesives, aircraft, spacecraft, and missies (109) are built with secondary-bonded and some primary-bonded structures. The PABST (Primary Adhesive Bonding Structures Technology) program (110) was carried out at the Air Force Materials Laboratory between 1976 and 1981. That project led to the construction of a totally adhesive-bonded 42-foot-long circumferential fuselage section of a... 

Today, FRCs are in use in a variety of structures, ranging from spacecraft and aircraft to buildings and bridges. FRCs find applications in construction industries, decking, window and door frames, sports equipment such as bicycle frames, baseball bats, exercise equipment, etc. They are also suited for many automotive applications. This wide use of composites has been facilitated by the introduction of new materials, improvements in manufacturing processes and developments of new analytical and testing methods. 

Over the past half century, synthetic plastics have become the major new materials for everything from replacements for human body parts to the construction of supersonic aircraft and spacecraft. Much of this growth has taken place at the expense of more traditional materials, such as steel, aluminum, paper and glass. Quite understandably, the industries associated with their manufacture have fought back through public relations campaigns intended... 

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