Adaptive Allotropy
Adaptive Allotropy made their first breakthough in transparent silicon bucky-structures in the late 2030s. Fortunately unmanned test mission saw these windows explode after a mere 6 minutes in Low earth orbit, and led to a further 6 years of painstaking research before their certification of mission use.
Adaptive Allotropy supplies windows made from silicon bucky-structures materials for use on space settlements. Windows can be ordered in any shape. With proper sealing, standard, 12 mm thick, windows with rectangular side length or diameter no greater than 0.91 m can retain up to a 1.01 bar pressure difference across them.The allowable safe span doubles if the thickness of the window is doubled, while the allowable pressure difference squares with the increase in thickness (e.g. doubling the thickness allows for four times the pressure difference)*. If never exposed to direct sunlight, windows provide adequate radiation and thermal insulation, they are, however, prone to brittle failure.
The price per unit is $1,000 per m3 of material, multiplied by the thickness in mm. For bulk orders, Adaptive Allotropy will offer reductions from the list price: 1-10, 0%; 10-50, 5%; 50-100, 10%; 100-200, 15%; 200-400, 20%; 400-1,000, 25%; 1,000-2,000, 30%; 2,000-10,000, 35%; >10,000, 40%. Costs are rounded up on each unit to the nearest $0.01. This price does not include shipping from Bellevistat.
*This is quantified with the equation σmax = (Δp L2) / (2 t2) where Δp is the pressure difference in Pa, L is the span in m, t is the thickness in m, and σmax is the maximum allowable tensile stress in the material, 290.1 MPa.
This webpage refers to a fictional company which is part of the UK Space Design Competition. No information presented here or implied herefrom should be regarded as factual. Any similarities with real events, places, or persons are purely coincidental.