Hans.Moravec%CMU-RI-ROVER@sri-unix.UUCP (01/17/84)
a028 0120 17 Jan 84
PM-Made in Space, Bjt,500
'Made in Space' Label to Appear Soon
By HARRY F. ROSENTHAL
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Plastic beads so tiny that millions fit in bottles
smaller than your little finger will earn NASA $210,000 next year as
the first commercial product entitled to the label: Made in Space.
Nowhere else could they have been made uniform and perfectly round.
They were created in four flights of the space shuttle, and the only
thing that remains before they can be put to use is that they be
measured and their size guaranteed.
In the hands of medical researchers, the beads will be put to such
exotic uses as measuring the ''exit channels'' of the eyes of glaucoma
victims and determining the size of the pores of stomach and
intestinal walls in cancer studies. They will be used to calibrate
industrial and electronic instruments and devices that measure
pollution.
With ceremony appropriate to the occasion, the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration soon will turn over 25 grams of beads - less
than one ounce - to the National Bureau of Standards. The bureau will
certify their 10 micrometer size within one hundred-millionth of a
meter, said Stan Raspberry, chief of the office of standard reference
materials.
A micrometer equals one-millionth of a meter.
When that project is completed in 1985, the beads will be divided
into 600 units and sold to private researchers for $350 a unit.
While technology developed for space has found applications on
Earth, the latex beads created in the shuttle's ''monodisperse latex
reactor'' are the first true space products to find commercial uses.
There are many more such products to follow, however, including drugs
made with a purity obtainable only in space.
On Earth, it is possible only to make latex beads up to three
micrometers because gravity tends to make larger sizes egg-shaped and
irregular. The beads created in the microgravity in which the shuttle
flies can be made in uniform, perfectly round sizes in large
quantities.
John W. Vanderhoff, a professor of chemistry at Lehigh University in
Pennsylvania and chief scientist of the latex bead producing project,
said the beads will be made in ever-larger sizes on four future
flights.
He compared the manufacture to the seeding process in which oysters
are forced to create pearls.
''The pearl oyster gets a grain that acts as an irritant,'' he said.
''In this, we prepare a nucleus and it grows to larger size.'' The
beads are made of polystyrenes, the same material used in foam
drinking cups.
''Let's say you are interested in calibrating an electronic particle
counter in a hospital,'' he said. ''It's desirable to calibrate it
once in a while with a particle of known size.''
Raspberry said eventually the Bureau of Standards expects to certify
space-produced spheres of 30 and 100 micrometers.
To measure the tiny spheres, technicians at the bureau will use a
number of sophisticated methods. One technique uses the angle at which
light is scattered off the beads to record the diameter of the beads.
Another uses a scanning electron microscope.
The beads then will go into the bureau's inventory of materials that
are yardsticks against which similar materials are measured.
ap-ny-01-17 0420EST
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