Remember in Star Trek VI: The Voyage Home, when Scotty gives an engineer the secret to making the super-strong windows of the Starship Enterprise?
Transparent Aluminum? Interesting choice of fictional material...
Because we could make the windows of the Starship Enterprise today!
And they would be made out of a stronger material than 'Transparent Aluminum'!
And indeed, Aluminum would have something to do with it, because those windows would be made out of Aluminum Oxide!
Or, Colorless Artificial Sapphire!
Sapphire is as strong as steel, more or less, possibly more even. Sapphire is the third hardest material known to man. To cut it you need diamond blades.
Which we can make in a lab, by the way. Artificial diamond is actually a widely available industrial material for technology, if you don't need it any larger than naturally occuring diamonds are likely to be. So, yes, artificial diamond dust is grown for diamond blades, diamond blades set in steel.
Which we use to cut, when necessary, another fairly abundant industrial material for technology: colorless sapphire.
We can grow an artificial diamond large enough to be the window that covers the face of a typical wristwatch.
This would be thin and flat like a windowpane, not half an inch thick or anything like that, and probably not gem-quality. But you would be able to see through them just fine. And the material would be super-strong, and the hardest substance known to man.
By the way, how do you cut the hardest substance known to man? You cut one diamond against another, along the lines of its crystallization.
A diamond window big enough for the face of a wristwatch? Diamond blades for cutting the hardest substances?
The possibilities are endless. Super-strong, transparent, and the hardest substance known to man.
Colorless sapphire. Far easier to grow than richly colored gem quality ruby or deep blue sapphire.
The third hardest substance known to man. Strong as steel. Fireproof- it can't burn. Because it has already been burnt. It's already an oxide.
And it's transparent.
The possibilities are endless. Absolutely staggering.
And one thing is that you could make the windows of the Starship Enterprise out of this stuff.
They can grow panes of clear colorless sapphire as wide as my head, and just as tall.
You could make a window the size of the window of the Ten-Four Lounge out of this stuff. As big a window as you could imagine. A window the size of the face of a house.
How?
Simple. An ancient technique.
You make a lattice out of steel, and fit the many smaller panes of colorless sapphire into the holes in the lattice.
That was how they made windows out of glass in the old days, back in the Medieval days of Gothic Cathedrals, when they had a hard time making glass into huge panes.
You make a steel lattice, and place the many small panes into the holes in the lattice!
And the lattice itself is as strong as steel!
With a sturdy enough steel lattice, you could make the windows of the Starship Enterprise, and they would stop bullets!
Indeed, we already use colorless sapphire for the windows of American military helicopters- windows that can take artillery shells!
We could make the windows of the Starship Enterprise today!
And it wouldn't cost as much as you would think!
Lab-grown gem-quality ruby and sapphire is far less expensive than naturally occurring.
It's the same substance- as legit as it gets, and far more free of flaws.
But it's much easier to grow colorless sapphire than richly colored gemstones, and it is much easier to grow basic window-quality stuff than gem-quality sapphire.
And much easier to grow then artificial diamonds- and almost as hard, and probably just as strong. Plus it's fireproof. The possibilities are endless.
So nice industrial colorless sapphire, not gem quality but still easy to see through, is far, far less expensive than lab-grown gemstones, and far easier to grow in large crystals.
So we could make the windows of the Starship Enterprise today
And it wouldn't cost as much as the Space Shuttle!
The future is gonna be great!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson
P.S. artificial diamonds are harder to grow than colorless sapphire, but diamonds that don't have to have gem-quality optical qualities are much easier to grow, and small ones, like for use in diamond-edged blades, are far easier to grow than big ones of wristwatch size, so making industrial diamonds for the hardest blades known to man- diamond-edged blades (tiny diamonds set in steel) is not that hard either! The future is gonna be great! The possibilities are endless!