Further research tells me that they simply cited the wrong paper from W. W. Mendell, ed.; Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century. (Houston, TX, Lunar and Planetary Institute, 1985.) They should have cited Blacic, J. D.; Mechanical Properties of Lunar Materials Under Anhydrous, Hard Vacuum Conditions: Applications of Lunar Glass Structural Components (1985.) Blacic was cited by Rowley & Neudecker, and it was Blacic who made the point about the effect of water contamination on silicate bonding. Blacic even has a figure to help us visualize the problem.
How strong is strong?
So does Blacic support Hoagland & Bara's statement that lunar glass would be "approximately twice as strong as steel under the same stress conditions"? No, not at all. In fact, Blacic's Table 1 specifically falsifies the statement.
Here are the key comparisons in that table:
Young's modulus of lunar glass: 100 GPa, cf. alloy steel 224 GPa, terrestrial glass 68 GPa.
Ultimate tensile strength, alloy steel 2.3 GPa. For lunar glass, ultimate tensile strength is dependent on many factors especially temperature. Blacic gives a range of 0.007 - 3.0
Blacic writes (p. 491):
How can lunar glass be utilized? One obvious way is in the form of glass fibers in tensile stress situations. Although lunar glass will be very strong, it will still be a very brittle material, and therefore it makes sense to distribute the load over many small elements. .... lunar glass fibers should always be coated with a metal such as Fe, Al or Mg to protect the glass from inadvertent or purposeful exposure to water vapor. Otherwise, a highly stressed glass component might fail catastrophically due to water-induced stress corrosion.
Summary
:: Lunar glass has only half the Young's modulus of steel.:: If the absolute maximum of the range given for ultimate tensile strength is achieved, lunar glass fibers might be about one-third stronger than steel. At the low end of the range, lunar glass would be about 300x weaker.
:: Using lunar soil in the form of glass does not get you out of the need to mine metals. The metals will be needed for coating.
:: Hoagland & Bara lied.
:: Hoagland & Bara lied, not just in their books, but repeatedly in many radio programs, most recently only 10 days ago.
12 comments:
Nice try Expat, but no sale. Obviously Blacic (along with every other materials scientist on the planet) is in on the conspiracy to keep the truth from getting out. That so called "Young's Modulus" is obviously wrong. Either it's an outright lie, or there is no consideration of the HD effects of being on the Moon in it's calculations. Trying to confuse the issue with real math and science is a trick you debunkers are famous for.
It's worth mentioning that Hoagland has, in the past, phrased things in such a way as to imply that *any* glass would be stronger than steel on the moon. I don't have the exact quotes at hand, but I'm pretty sure I've seen him say, essentially, that "glass is stronger than steel on the moon."
Which I took, at the time, to mean that glass manufactured on Earth could be transported to the moon, and once it was there, Hoagland was saying it would be stronger than steel.
This confused me tremendously, and all I could think of was that he was saying a vacuum would somehow make glass stronger.
Chris, I can see what you're doing! Double bluff, disinfo, conspiracy, NWO anti troother propagnda..Trying the old 'pretend' to be on the side of the troothers but in fact being a paid NASA,CIA,IRS,FBI,FEMA, paid schill...Wait til Richard finds out..
YP
Flight: That has to be a misunderstanding. The whole point of these studies is to confirm that structural material does not need to be transported Earth > Moon.
Another problem for Hoagland that this issue brings up is the article's emphasizing (as you mentioned) the need for metal coatings. Hoagland has mentioned on multiple occasions that the reason his ruins are so hard to see is because they're transparent and need to forward scatter sunlight at a particular angle to be visible. A real glass building wouldn't be so ephemeral if everything's coated with metal, I'd imagine.
Also, given that the material's still very brittle, I really wonder how well glass buildings would hold up against Hoagland's "billions of years of meteoric rain" that he bludgeoned to death in his 1994 Ohio State presentation. Blacic says that crack propagation velocity is much reduced in a lunar analogue glass (page 489), not that it's impossible to crack. How many years until a critical crack in one of those buttresses sends a ten-mile skyscraper crashing down?
Regarding the conclusions about lying, I'd propose Hanlon's razor instead.
D.
Fair point. I'd agree in the case of Mike Bara -- not so sure about Hoagland. He's very, very devious.
With Hoagland, one can assume he's just a lying bastard without any fear of contradiction. At one time in his life , he was actually interested in real science, so he knows what he is saying is bull shit. He just counts on the ignorance of his audience to make the sale.
Bara was probably one of the ignorant ones in that audience. He may actually know better by now, but I kind of doubt it. His complete inability to formulate any real defence of his work (beyond calling his critics douche bags and "homos") suggests that he doesn't know enough about the subject to come up with good (or at least entertaining) bullshit.
Chris, don't forget Mike Bara's "defence" of his work extends to demonstrations using primitive image-edit software that have the reverse of the intended effect.
Has Captain Enterprise been stuck onboard a stranded sea vessel for a while, or did he escape disaster in the nick of time??... Gregor Ahrens over at bookface says he will be telling us all about his experiments and experiences very soon - so stay tuned!
(If the world's leading scientist in 21st century physics being connected to a mysteriously stranded ship isn't hard evidence of TPTB's attempts to suppress him and his HD knowledge, I don't know what is!!! - you know, unless it's the "good guys" sending us a message, in which case it's virtually this year's version of the blue norwegian spiral if you ask me!)
Mike Bara's best buddy Sean David Morton has to come up with $11.5M to pay the SEC, since he didn't respond to their lawsuit in timely fashion. Silly boy.
http://www.law360.com/newyork/articles/415350
Listening to Hoagland talk about the meteor being "vectored" into a magical number trajectory by some nebulous intelligence to convey some vague indecipherable "message" brings to mind the equally ridiculous notion that some alien "intelligence" creates yard art (crop circles) to convey magical mystical messages meant to communicate "something" to the poor humans stuck here on our ball of mud. These off-worlders (aliens, advanced humans, god(s), spirit beings, etc.) are allegedly so advanced technically, socially, and (LOL) spiritually that they can orchestrate meteor strikes or invisibly produce property destroying cereal pictographs from their their respective dimensions but they cannot master a single Earth language and communicate their important "message" through a radio, television, or even an Internet broadcast of some kind? The mooks.
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