[ExI] vaccuum balloon in freon

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
…

As Mike said, think outside the balloon.  …

 

 

Hey cool I had an idea for Adrian’s vacuum balloon.

 

As a demonstration, he could float a pre-buoyant version of his idea in gaseous halocarbon C318:

 

https://www.airgas.com/airgascatalog/catalog/P24_Halocarbon-C318,_Halocarbon-1216_Pure_Gases.pdf

 

https://www.fluorined-chemicals.com/propellant-gas/halocarbon-c318-c4f8-octafluorocyclobutane.html

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octafluorocyclobutane

 

We fooled with the stuff at Lockheed back in 1989 for making a circuit card cleaning system and as a possible wave-solder medium.  It has a boiling point of way down there below water ice temperature.  It is non-toxic and safe to handle, doesn’t cost much.  It is similar chemically to that stuff we have long used to clean dust and debris from circuits.  It is used in fire extinguishers and (I think) in the canned whipped cream propellant.  It is chemically stable as it can be, so even if you breathe some of it, that won’t hurt ya.  It has a molecular weight of 200, so it is about seven times the density of air.  We kept the stuff in an open box with a heating element at the bottom and not very much spilled out that we could tell.

 

We had a heated vat of the stuff.  If you found some of the really light aluminum foil, you could make a boat out of it and float it in the gaseous OFC (octofluorocyclobutane.)  The heavy kitchen foil wouldn’t work, but we had some much lighter aluminum foil we were fooling with.   It wouldn’t float long, because the aluminum boat would leak.  But it made for fun visual effect while it stayed up there.

 

Adrian could build his prototype vacuum balloon which wouldn’t even need to be lighter than the air it displaces for demonstration purposes, never mind evacuating it for now, float the whole thing in C4F8.  You would observe truth in advertising of course, make it clear this version isn’t ready for prime time, but rather is a testbed, and this is what it will look like if it holds up to the pressure.

 

spike

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