Basalt fiber?

> BTW, according to this independent article at Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber) ...

Well, not quite entirely independent. That's where I found out
about the stuff, and iirc the first link I posted was the one at the
bottom of that Wikipedia page.

I'm thinking maybe a composite material is the way to go for many
purposes, like fiberglass with basalt fiber in place of the glass
and a low-melting-point mix of lunar metals in place of the epoxy.

I wonder how complicated the machinery is to fabricate structures
from spools of basalt fiber. I'm imagining a spacecraft bound for
an asteroid being launched from the moon as a bunch of machinery and
spools of fiber, as a package compact and g-tolerant enough to be
sent by mass-driver, and then assembling itself en route into a big
spindly thing suitable for life in zero-g.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Lucio de Souza Coelho
wrote:
>
> Gosh, I visited the site and the stuff sounds like unobtanium. In
> particular, basalt is, well, rock, and we know that rock-based
> structures (like the Pyramids) can last for millennia, and that
sounds
> good for a space city. (Since cities last for centuries and,
> occasionally, millenia.)
>
> BTW, according to this independent article at Wikipedia
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber) this stuff was
invented in
> 1923 and greatly improved by *them* (military from US, Soviet
Union,
> Europe) during WWII and it was declassified in... 1995. Dammit! The
> dream material for space colonies has been existing for decades and
> *they* only tell me now!
>
> On 10/7/05, Dan Wylie-Sears wrote:
> > I hope double-posting isn't too much of a faux-pas here. I
found this
> > page about basalt fiber:
> > http://www.albarrie.com/Filtration/fil-basalt.html
> >
> > Density g/cm 2.7
> > Tensile strength MPa 4840
> >
> > That's stronger than Kevlar, isn't it? If I did the scratchwork
> > right, that would mean it could support its own centrifugal
weight at
> > one g of pseudogravity with a radius up to 180km times whatever
factor
> > you need between working strength and break strength. (Or
divided by,
> > if you express the safety factor as a number greater than one
instead
> > of its reciprocal.)
> >
> > Anyway, this is sounding like a material that holds up other
things,
> > not just radiation shielding strong enough to spin with the rest
of
> > the structure. With basalt like this, who needs aluminum?
(Except