Space-made reference materials go to market The commercialization of space be came a reality last week as the first products to be manufactured there were shipped to customers. They are polystyrene beads that are uni formly 10 μπι in diameter and are being marketed by the National Bureau of Standards as a standard reference material to use in cali brating microscopes and other in struments that measure in the micro meter range (C&EN, Aug. 6, 1984, page 21). The spheres fill an important niche in NBS's array of measure ment standards. Until now, NBS has had no standard reference material in the range from 1 to 100 μπι, a range that is important in biology, the manufacture of coatings and photographic films, and many oth er applications. Last month, researchers at the Na tional Aeronautics & Space Admin istration turned over to NBS for cer tification 30-μπα polystyrene beads made in space. These also will be offered for sale as standard refer ence materials once NBS has com pleted its characterization of them and can certify their precise size, a process expected to take about nine months. NASA and NBS hope even tually to produce and offer for sale similar beads made in space in the 90- to 100-μπι range as well. The beads now being marketed were produced aboard a space shut tle flight in 1983 as part of a NASA project headed by chemistry pro fessor John W. Vanderhoff of Le high University and NASA chemist Dale Kornfeld of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The project, known as the monodisperse latex reactor project, consists of four, 100-mL reaction vessels and their associated hardware. Flown five times so far, the project last went up in February 1984. It was sched uled to fly on three missions since then but was forced off because of competition for available space on these flights. Although making uniform poly styrene beads in sizes up to about 2 μιη in diameter is relatively easy on Earth, current methods fail when
Lehigh's Vanderhofi cradles first beads produced in space as team members (from left) Fortunato Micale, Dale Kornfeld, and Mohamed El-Aasser look on trying to make larger beads, Van derhoff explains. The b^ads are made using smaller beads as seeds and swelling them with styrene in an aqueous emulsion system. Den sity differences among the mono mer, the polymer, and water mean that the system requires consider able stirring to maintain the emul sion. Under these conditions, the naturally sticky swollen beads co agulate and become useless. In an orbiting spacecraft, however, the lack of gravity eliminates the need for such vigorous s t i r r i n g and uniform-sized beads can be pro-
duced. The gravity-free environment also produces spherical beads, rath er than the egg-shaped ones that would occur on Earth. NBS is marketing the certified beads in 5-mL vials, each contain ing about 30 million spheres sus pended in water, at a price of $384 per vial. At this price, the 600 vials available will recover roughly twice NBS's costs for certifying the mate rial. Half of the income from the sales will be turned over to NASA to recover some of the cost of de veloping the manufacturing tech nique. D
Scientists' opposition to Star Wars growing Scientists at some of the nation's leading universities and research in stitutes have signed statements op posing the Administration's Strate gic Defense Initiative (SDI) and re fusing to accept funds from the Pentagon's SDI office because they believe the antimissile system, as proposed, is "technically dubious and politically unwise," and that it will spark an arms race and under mine arms control. This opposition to SDI, better known as "Star Wars," developed independently and concurrently this spring among physicists at the Uni versity of Illinois and Cornell Uni versity. Today, the number of those opposing Star Wars appears to have reached critical mass, setting in mo tion a chain reaction that is draw ing in scientists from other depart-
ments, including chemistry, and from other institutions. University of Illinois physics pro fessor John B. Kogut says: "The ob jective is to influence policy." The Illinois statement ends, "We hope, together, to persuade the public and the Congress not to support this deeply misguided, dangerous, and enormously expensive program." Backing for this stance appears, in part, to have been generated by past Administration remarks. At Il linois, physics professor Frederick K. Lamb says that "the massive out pouring" of support for the state ment—48 of 60 active faculty mem bers and more than 100 graduate students signed on—occurred be cause "this spring the Administra tion said there was broad support for this [SDI] program among sciJuly 22, 1985 C&EN
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