8 thoughts on “Blackout”

  1. I thought Spinal Tap’s Album was the “Blackest” of all.

    “It’s like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.”

  2. Neato, should help remove stray light induced noise for EO systems.

    I wonder what its absorption and emission spectrum look like. I wonder if it is easily tune-able to different absorption bands by varying the density or other physical properties, and whether it can hold up to vibe and thermal stress very well.

  3. Also claimed to have excellent thermal conductivity; if it were cheap, could be useful for thermal solar applications.

      1. Why? Space radiators want to maximize emission. Increasing absorption doesn’t necessarily help that, and depending on your attitude control system (i.e. are radiators always pointed toward the black?) more absorptivity could render your radiator less effective and reliable – which would make it necessarily bigger, and thus pick up more incident radiation…

        So no, “shiny” is preferred, which is why smart space smugglers use it as slang for
        all that is cool and good.

    1. I thought about that too, but realized it wouldn’t be of much benefit, absorbing 99.97% vs. 99.00% of incident radiation’s energy isn’t much of an increase in energy harvested (<1% increase), the diminishing returns as absorptivity increase wouldn't make it profitable to push the boundary for that purpose. I doubt the thermal conductivity vs. price, compared to other thermally conductive materials, would make it any more attractive than traditional material for the purpose.

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