I already posted this in the thread with the glass v acrylic, but
decided that it should have a thread of its own... if only to get shot
down. I'm not exactly going to be shocked if there is some basic
problem with this. But anyway, here it is:

Maybe there are some VVD fans here who can ponder this weird idea I've
gotten.

If I deposit vapors of both aluminum and oxygen together, will I be
depositing sapphire? If not, is there anything I can do to my vacuum
vapor depositing maching, or to the vapor it deposits, so that it IS
depositing sapphire? I occurs to me that sapphire might be a wonderful
material for certain uses, such as windows.

What about this: deposit multiple layers of sapphire, until it is
about ten microns thick, then wrap the structure (I'll assume a
Stanford Torus spoke) in a ten micron diametre strand of anhydrous
glass. Wind it tight, and go over it again with the VVD machine until
you've built up another ten microns of sapphire, then wind it tight
with...

Do this until you have a ten centimetre thick shell. Then put a
millimetre thick coating of regular aluminum on the inside and outside
surfaces. Or maybe not. Hey, would this composite glass/sapphire
material be transparant?

Saphire is really tough, hard and transparent. The
colors usually seen are contaminants.

On earth we drop Al O2 thru an H2 O2 flame, where it
deposits on a boule. The extreme pressure generated by
transition from a liquid phase to solid forces the
molecular structure into its lowest energy state, ie,
into crystaline saphire. Don't know how vacuum
deposition would work.
Might be interesting to try,,,

GAry 7