Velcro and the space program
William Jacobs
: Velcro legend: a friend once told me the U.S. military was spending
: a tidy sum to develop silent velcro for stealth purposes. Likely?
True, if _All Things Considered_ can be trusted. I listened to an extended
report on the struggle to create stealth velcro sometime between a year and
two years ago. As I recall, it was not for pants, but more for holsters and
holding together assorted equipment. They were having some success, and were
able to cut the sound level in half, or thereabouts. That's the best my
memory can do. Perhaps one of the NPR enployees who lurk around here could
look it up in the files.
Bill "Why do we have to actually build stealth airplanes? Just tell our enemies
that we have thousands of invisible planes and they're EVERYWHERE!" jacobs
--
William Jacobs | "I've got a $100,000 in this briefcase,
Astronomy Dept., San Diego State | and two bottles of Jim Beam in this
bja...@mintaka.sdsu.edu | sack, and some cheese, too, and a
Screw disclaimers. | pomegranate." -- Roy Earle
Mike Huber
:
: just as an aside: the main difference in Velcro (which is a registered
: trademark of the Velcro Corp) used in the early space program compared to
: the pieces on Earth was that the orbital stuff was specially treated to
: be inert and not give off any odors or gasses.
:
: plastics generally "outgas" and while this isn't usually a problem on
: Earth, it can be somewhat annoying in a sealed space capsule.
I understand plastic outgassing is the source of that extremely
annoying fog in the windshields of cars that doesn't go away
when the windshield becomes hot and dry.
Mike Huber
Gerald
>According to "The Timetables of Science" Velcro was invented in 1948 and
>patented in 1955 by George de Mestral:
> "After a walk in the woods with his dog, Swiss engineer George
> de Mestral steals an idea from the cockleburs in his socks and
> the dog's coat and invents the fastener Velcro."
Just what was did this fellow patent? Was there a U.S. patent? Seems to me
that this just implemented what nature had already perfected. I thought
this was not allowed in U.S., but I don't know what other countries permit.
The one French patent I worked with was impressive in its vagueness.
--
Gerald Ruderman
g...@vanward.ci.net