[meteorite-list] Expensive?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:22:43 2004
Message-ID: <200306262343.QAA14970_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

 
> Hello Ron, I did some reading yesterday on aerogel and found an article
> about someone doing an artic expedition and buying a areogel blanket. They
> said it was rather expensive, $45 a square foot. But I could not find a
> weight per size figure. It would take a lot of square feet to make up the
> price of a gram of Chassigny.

Yes, the first commercial applications of aerogel are now starting to come out.
And just like there are different types of meteorites, there are different types
of aerogel. The aerogel we're using on Stardust (aka 'blue smoke') is silica
aerogel, and the silica aerogel is the one in Guiness World Records. The other
type of aerogel is carbon aerogel. It is heavier, but a better insulator than silica
aerogel. Carbon aerogel is black and you can't see through it like silica
aerogel. We're using carbon aerogel on the Mars rovers for insulation.

Carbon aerogel is being used in the aerogel blankets. For blankets, carbon a
erogel can be made in a thin film with a surface area of an incredible 2,500 square
meters/gram. So, using your $45/square foot number, we can get a cost on the
carbon aerogel. One square meter = 10.764 square feet. So the cost of a square meter of
carbon aerogel is 10.764 x $45, or about $484. You need 2,500 square meters
to get 1 gram of carbon aerogel. So that comes to $484 x 2,500 or
$1.2 million dollars per gram!

Silica aerogel, being lighter, would be even more.

Ron Baalke
Received on Thu 26 Jun 2003 07:43:54 PM PDT