Using Metamaterials to Build A Starshade in Space [NIAC 2025]

[@davidfinkledrums]

I just wanted to say I have enjoyed your KZbin channel for some time and lately I have really enjoying the quality guests you have been curating

[@klondike69none85]

thanks to Christine for giving this interview. Very interesting

[@jamesfowley4114]

Our usual last question (What are you obsessed with?) is a great way to close out an interview. I hope her research works out well. I would love to see some structures being produced in space from whatever raw materials can be obtained up there.

[@picksalot1]

Great interviews, wonderful guests, and fascinating subjects. You've set a very high bar, and I look forward to your next interview. Thanks

[@martythemartian99]

The Haburubl Worlds Observatory? Yeah we all get a little tongue tied sometimes.🤣 (it certainly made me chuckle)

[@KurtQuad]

Excellent interview and I love her enthusiasm about this subject matter. Living the dream of working on future tech.

[@CloudPeopleRecords]

Woohoo NIAC time!! I was just thinking, a soccer ball would be a good analogy, and then you... Nice. Great interview!

[@icaleinns6233]

Sounds like really interesting research with some real potential. Thanks Fraser.

[@CaliforniaBushman]

Now that's an interesting Tire Idea.

[@pilotnamealreadytaken6035]

i liked the conversation around 13:35? ish... thanks for the content.

[@jimmyjames5960]

Daily interviews!!! Yay!!! D20!

[@vincentcleaver1925]

I get that but no, she was showing octahedrons and cubes with the corners cut off. That shape was sort of an octahedron merged with a cube and would tile in 3D as cubes with an octa at each cube corner or octahedrons stacked vertex to vertex

[@revmsj]

These shades seem like they’re going to be super susceptible to micrometeoroid impacts which would then allow light through. I wonder what sort of mitigation they are planning on. Self healing materials perhaps?

[@andrewshort1586]

Question: Hi Fraser. Why do the sun shades have this petal shape to them and are not just circular. Would that not allow undesirable light through?

[@Apagadorable]

Tangentially related to the video: now that we know there are planets without stars and we can observe them directly, do we have any way of seeing if they have moons? We know that moons around giant planets can have subsurface oceans that could harbor life, so could there be starless planets with moons that have the needed properties to enable life to evolve?

[@AEFisch]

Seems like a geodesic dome is what they need? Glad to hear that mass production is a parameter, they will need a lot of them. Spending all the time and money to build JWST and not preserve the equipment and ability to reproduce another one, was shortsighted. A second would have been a fraction of the cost. Say this one was damaged tomorrow? No hubble like repair missions possible.

[@crazypilot2732]

Very informative interview. Rather than building the whole structure..could the center be an existing space object like an asteroid. Then add the petals or keep them at a distance to make the surrounding structure mimic being attached to it. Less mass to space, less joints.

[@bensimonjoules4402]

Real life Space Engineers ? I'm in.

[@vincentcleaver1925]

So the octet combines 'squishy' cubes with 'stiff' triangles and tetrahedrons

[@RobertAlberti-jz7sq]

Why not use a sphere rather than a flat disc? It seems a sphere would be more structurally sound.

[@therealduckshow]

The Event Horizon Telescope is a radio-based telescope, right? But if we had something similar for the visible spectrum, could we take pictures of planets in the solar system? Would they be good pictures?

[@synaxarion]

Does this research have many crossover applications with the proposed construction of Lunar radio telescopes on the far side of the moon?

[@martys9972]

Why does the star shade need to have the shape shown, i.e., a ring of outward facing points?

[@philhooper4196]

Insteead of using these fancy shields with cables and such, why not make tubes that fill up with air, that roll out like those party blowers, then have overlapping ones that cover the areas that don't overlap

[@Yezpahr]

The flopping would still happen in balloons unless they're somehow turning rigid in certain spin-up configurations... On Earth balloons are automatically rigid when inflated, but in space they work differently. The little air from 2 or 3 puffs you put into a regular balloon would pop it when you take it to space. If you get it to the point where it won't pop you'll notice the air collects in spherules while stretching some parts and leaving other parts floppy. There's really no winning with inflatables unless you go full-budget NASA style, who do have success in that field.

[@frasercain]

A separate NIAC grant is for inflatable starshades, so stay tuned for that interview. :-)

[@philhooper4196]

@@frasercain The inflatable idea would be better, roll out easier and attachment to the module would be only a large lock on the airchuck that is motorized so that it can rotate and lock in. I love the idea of futuristic materials, but until the day, lets use what we know instead of reinventing the wheel. BTW thanks for the reply

[@NullHand]

Problem with inflatables is gas supply. Everything flexible is porous to gas to some extent. You will need a constant supply of makeup gas to maintain pressure as you lose that leakage to the vacuum. This adds weight and cost to a mission. Especially for an observatory you might hope to last for years or decades.

[@philhooper4196]

@@NullHand but that's why we have an Elon Musk and his reusable rockets. We will be waiting for years for material science to catch up. Just have it refillable with a docking gas tank. Have enough fuel to get there and then return to earth orbit, where it can be refilled with fuel and gas

[@ashleyobrien4937]

THIS is what I have been droning on about for ages, forget red giants and red dwarfs and super earths etc. the only things we should be looking for are sun like stars with earth sized planets...if ever there will be some super compelling reason for some mega multinational to start sinking obscene coin into a mission to another star, this is it, the realization that there is another planet out there that we find, and is eerily similar to earth....

[@jdrissel]

I would be interested in this stiff but hightly dampened metamaterial for acoustic applications. It might make an excellent tweeter diaphragm.

[@JonathanMensah-f4h]

We are looking for planets with habitable zones, or Earth-like in living conditions so we can plan a journey and build vehicles to take us there. Multi-Star Peoples

[@paulkaiser8834]

How many NIAC grants actually come to fruition? I’m sure there is some basic longitudinal data. Of those that get realized, how close are they to the grant proposals vs derivative outcomes?

[@frasercain]

That's a really interesting question, I'll dig into it, see if I can get an update from NIAC.

[@bert.pasquale]

Very few. NIAC proposals are by definition “longshot” tech development efforts. But sunshades have had a long development path already and they are pretty much inevitable at some scale.

[@ALightToSeeBy]

I wonder what her take is on Composite Metal Foam (CMF)?

[@ericprice6193]

Christine, talk to Ian Crossland about graphine. Use graphine as a new material. It's lightweight, super strong, and heat resistant. Graphine is the meta material of the future. But Ian Crossland would know more about it than me. It might benefit you to talk to him. He is a hippie and is a little out there, but he is very knowledgeable about graphine. He is one of the makers of Mines. He is a host on Timcast.

[@faolitaruna]

I'm getting excited for Starshade, which won't be deployed until 2040. Isn't that silly?

[@Catch22-k8d]

Let's hope that that rich guy from S. Africa, who seems to be co- presidenting, doesn't set his sights on dismantling NASA! (Not saying that he could have, let's say, personal reasons to do that).

[@bert.pasquale]

No.

[@12pentaborane]

Even without his input I'm a little worried NASA research in general based on this administration's attitude. Developing star-shields to observe the distant past has a lot less public appeal than sending humans into deep space.

[@Catch22-k8d]

@bert.pasquale No what?

[@Moser72]

I’m just waiting to see how long it takes for some nation to decide to deposit a massive dust cloud at earths L1 Lagrange point to tackle climate change and inadvertently trigger an ice age that collapses civilization.

[@EveryoneWhoUsesThisTV]

Starshade tech is something we need to develop and produce cheaply! :) Once we realize that energy austerity won't fix global warming, we'll need to move on to geoengineering. Starshades deployed at the Sun-Earth Lagrange-1 point are an obvious option for cooling the Earth and if they get cheap enough, could be chosen as a method to curb climate change! It would be nice to practice geoengineering on Mars first, make our mistakes there and move on to Earth, but those aren't the cards we've been dealt. Solar radiation management (SRM) could get a lot of fresh focus if the SpaceX Starship is able to put 100t+ into orbit!

[@4STEVEJOY34]

Why not use chemical reactions to build in space? Like when you put a Mentos in a bottle of diet Coke and the expanding gas structure is immense. Could research find a material that it's in a can then expands and harden into a molded shape that could be a building material in some fashion.

[@petevenuti7355]

Where were all these smart attractive women with similar interests when I was in my 20's? I would absolutely be happy with a smart friend with similar interests to hang out with now , wish they lived local to me...

[@johnmcelholum4203]

Why build a sun shield build a huge solar farm and it'll pay for itself!

[@blogsfred3187]

Because it needs to be in l2 orbit, sheltered from the sun, also moving all the time, often at 90 degrees to solar radiation. Additional mass would make it harder to move.

[@annoyed707]

First non-bot comment.

[@frasercain]

How can KZbin not catch them? It's not rocket science.

[@Jameson1776]

It must be worse it must be rocket surgery.

[@johnnyz3073]

The material that you are looking for to build a star shade is Dark Matter.

[@Jameson1776]

But then you wouldn’t be able to find your material to build your starshade.

[@DannyJoh]

Is dark matter opaque?

[@blogsfred3187]

No that would be the lens…you need a black hole.

[@solsystem1342]

​@@DannyJoh It's a joke, it doesn't interact with light beyond warping space with gravity like normal matter. So the joke is that "dark matter" would be uniquely bad at blocking light even if we knew what it was and get some

[@rodClark717]

Well played

[@ricke6854]

Does she ever answer the question as to what these meta materials are ?? Lol, answer the question, lady

[@ericprice6193]

GRAPHINE

[@ericprice6193]

But if course, you are smart, and your team has probably already thought of using graphine.