
Pykrete - raldi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete
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akkartik
It plays a major role in Neal Stephenson's latest novel, SeveneveS.

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jnsaff2
Yes it does. And the book is mighty good as well.

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JoachimS
The opinion about Seveneves varies quite a lot. I found it to be really bad
and a great disappointment, and I am a huge Stephenson fan. Anathem being one
of the best reads of my life. Seveneves is far from being a new Anathem.

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hypersoar
I definitely liked it the least of all the Stephenson I've read. He spends
lots of time talking about pykrete and bolides and orbital mechanics and robot
swarms and space habitats, and in the end it doesn't feel like he spends very
much time talking about _people_.

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mdekkers
agreed - interesting story, but many small editing errors, and endless harping
on about stuff that doesn't really do anything to drive the narrative forward
left me disappointed.

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erbo
Something like this shows up in Arthur C. Clarke's _The Songs of Distant
Earth._

In that book, the interstellar starship _Magellan_ can reach a large fraction
of lightspeed, thanks to its "quantum drive," but, at those speeds,
interstellar gas and dust becomes a real problem that could damage the ship.
The ship, therefore, has an ablative shield on its nose, made of ice. (This
shield has to be replaced, which is why the _Magellan_ stops off at the
mostly-water world Thalassa en route to its final destination.) The shield is
built of giant hexagonal tiles of ice, which contain seaweed as a
strengthener; the resulting mixture is dubbed "icecrete" by some of the
engineers. Clarke may have been alluding to pykrete here; I assume he'd have
known about it.

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koenigdavidmj
Probably posted based on the earlier post today about Boston's snow problem:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9842887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9842887)

Basically, their snow is dirty enough that there's still a 12 foot pile of the
stuff.

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stephengillie
I think you're right.

Sorry for the tangent, but posting to HN seems a rather passive-aggressive way
to show someone something. The submitter could have just linked it to the
discussion they were having. Instead it's like OP is desperate for attention.

Or at least that's how it works on Imgur.

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darkmighty
You're concluding too much, it could be just someone found it interesting and
decided to share.

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raldi
Actually, I did it for the karma.

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davesque
Good plan. It worked! :)

I did find it interesting though.

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suprjami
Because building concrete ships has worked out so well in the past. The Selma
developed a crack, nobody knew how to repair it, so she was scuttled. However
she was too big to scuttle with other ships, so a specific spot had to be
made.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Selma_(1919)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Selma_\(1919\))

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pavel_lishin
A ship made of pykrete is probably a lot easier to scuttle than one made out
of concrete. You just let it melt.

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ucaetano
That can take forever in the arctic, as mentioned in the article...

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uptownfunk
I thought this was some new python package.

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vilhelm_s
Grab the name before someone else takes it!

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spiritplumber
We tried to make it with simulated Martian regolith at MDRS, but no go.

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themodelplumber
That's awesome, is there a list somewhere of the different experiments that
have been done at MDRS?

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spiritplumber
[http://mdrs.marssociety.org/crew-reports](http://mdrs.marssociety.org/crew-
reports) Sadly there's no list per se, this is the closest.

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ptaipale
I have always particularly liked this scene, even if it is completely
apocryphal:

"Next, he fired at the pykrete to give an idea of the resistance of that kind
of ice to projectiles. The bullet ricocheted off the block, grazing the
trouser leg of Admiral Ernest King and ending up in the wall."

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soperj
So this would be a good way to prevent sea ice from melting? Just drop wood
fiber into the artic ocean(near gjoa haven) sometime in late september, and
then continue dropping wood fiber until february moving out in the direction
of the aleutian islands.

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maratd
There are far simpler things you can do to affect the global climate. See the
"Risks and criticisms" for some reasons on why we may not want to.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering)

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rorygreig
There's a Mythbusters episode where they make a boat out of Pykrete, it's
pretty awesome.

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pavel_lishin
They used layered newspaper, right?

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scott_s
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete#In_the_media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete#In_the_media)

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tedunangst
This would be a great link to submit to HN!

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civilian
I was really hoping this was going to be a python package for manipulating the
symbols in the Linear A and Linear B scripts. :-/

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trhway
dream of a DOD contractor. Short term of service (thus launching a ship a
replacement for it has to be started to be built immediately) with constant
maintenance during it. Looking at the flight test results, i suspect that
pykrete has made its way as a super secret core material inside composite
pieces of F-35.

