[ExI] super soldier ants and the tata nano

[Kelly Anderson]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 2:39 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
>>... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson
> Subject: Re: [ExI] super soldier ants and the tata nano
>
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 12:46:08AM -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>>
>>>> ... Foam up and harden to Styrofoam
>>> consistency in a few hundred milliseconds, then disintegrate within
>>> 30 seconds after that (to allow said ape to breathe again)...
>>
>>> Doesn't help with twisting brainstem injury...
>
>>...The question for this group is whether you think it is possible from a
> chemical standpoint. Is there something that would expand fast enough and
> harden quickly enough to do the job? That would not then be so hard that you
> couldn't get out of it pretty easily afterwards...-Kelly
> _______________________________________________
>
> Hi Kelly, the foam notion sounds dubious to me, however we already have a
> technology that works: good old fashioned well-tested air bags.  They have
> been shown effective thousands of times.  So my notion is to make
> ape-haulers dramatically lighter and compensate for the loss of safety by
> having more air bags, say about 7 of them: four up front, one on either side
> and one aft.  spike

Air bags do save lives, and I'm glad for that. However, they are also
dangerous and do also take a small number of lives. If you had an ape
hauler for two apes, then you would not be able to carry micro-apes in
that car... In addition, they are very directional. If you have a head
on collision, they are great, but for collisions on odd angles, they
are somewhat less effective. The advantage of the foam (if it is
chemically possible at all) is that it prevents motion in all
directions simultaneously. Each air bag adds quite a bit to the cost
of a car, so putting seven into a nano tata might add 20% to the
current cost of the car. I can't see that being something that would
be widely supported. So the question remains open... is the foam
approach remotely possible chemically? I know some chemical reactions
(explosions) are VERY fast... so from that point of view it seems
plausible... even if nobody has figured out exactly how to do it yet.

-Kelly