You know how we all seen those space movies, the metal carcasses of gigantic spaceships approaching metal satellites that span around metal stations hovering about the atmospher-less planet were metal buildings pave the way of the eye view to the horizon. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! well...how about we, forget about metal alltogether. metal is surely strong...but we are not just going to have to put so much effort and time into building this gigantic machines/buildings/vehicles. Yes the robots will do it...but even with robots, just not fast enough and not enough resources. I present to you a totally different future, a future were metal is almost absent from the man's creations. And everything can be assembled on the go, a future of carbon fiber and aerogel. Carbonfiber Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Aerogel Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Spaceships made out of carbon fiber, stations made out of translucent aerogel...stronger, lighter, durable, much faster to assemble...this is the future. not metal.
Why not make them out of a living organism instead . That way they could repair themselves and adjust to whatever environment they are used in? :shrug:
true Nasor... having them made out of cells would be a quite good thing...but there are many disadvantages to that, such as inability to have large structures many stories high withstand pressure of the construction...even the tallest tree is not the size of empire state building, a creation of the neanderthal age of human space expansion.
It certainly has it's place(s) - but as material for large constructon applications, no way! It's FAR, FAR to weak.
Metal is a very common substance. Making anything large out of carbon fiber might be prohibitively expensive. Also, carbon fiber composites can be broken down by UV light. Iron is one of the most stable kinds of atoms. It is both strong and flexible. Wasn't aerogel designed to capture space particles? It's not meant for structural applications.
