Have we invented a material that is resistant to these thermal cycles indefinitely, or at least within a range of temperatures of several thousand degrees? I'm never going to have my own Star Destroyer if we continue to use subpar materials.
It does oxidize at high temperature, so you'll have to coat it with something. It's also fairly brittle, basically a strong ceramic (it caused us to loose Columbia during re-entry).
which is carbon-fiber in graphite, apparently, so the name is apt in that it's a composite of two different forms of carbon with different properties.
Other ways are to just infuse the porous matrix with more resin, before pyrolyzing again. Then loop a (few) dozen times.
Brittle materials are more temperature sensitive and can rapidly fail. Brittle fracture is no joke look for WWII Liberty ships split in two as an example. We didn't really understand why at that point in time.
The answer though is actually pretty simple and why you can't get a perfect material. The lattice structure of the molecules connected to each other can be soft (plastic) or hard (steel).
In the plastic example just take a milk jug and poor boiling water into it. Don't actually do this without protective gear (oven mit should be fine). The molecules holding everything together get excited from the energy (heat) move around and since they are not closely bonded end up in a different configuration. Your milk jug at this point does not look the same and is deformed.
In the hard example just boil the water you are using for the plastic test. The pot you used does not change because the molecules are tightly bonded.
It turns out the the tighter the molecules are bonded there is still a point where that bond will break. Hence the brittle fracture, which is every molecule mic dropping and going home at the same time.
While I could go down another rabbit hole to the atomic, subatomic, level of how those lattice structures work. I won't as I think this example gives you what you need.
Finally in this case we have a very old, by modern space technology, structure that is made of material that was most likely never expected to last this long. If you want a space ship to last you just have to make sure the engineers understand what "last" means. :)
It can be as high as 50% max tensile strength for steel, but I use 30% as my working figure when rigging, and I regularly re-inspect and age-retire gear (at least use annualized color coded markings).
When I’ve rigged circus in the past I’ve taken to replacing aluminum gear I find with steel, especially if it’s going to be installed for a while.
That said, I climb on aluminum. I just age out my equipment. I’d hate for my last thought to be “huh... I guess aluminum really does degrade with repeated stress.”
When I commented to a bike designer/engineer that it was a strange failure, he said that it was intentional, at least on hardtail mountain bikes like mine. A bent frame is ruined but doesn't lead to a catastrophic loss of control. A detached wheel or twisted fork would be next to impossible to control to a stop.
He looked at my frame and explained that that the two bends were in exactly the place they'd been designed to be, just behind the last butting. It's an impressive bit of forethought.
My guess on road bikes with steel forks, though, is that it's a matter of aerodynamic performance calling for compactness to reduce frontal area, something that would be harder to do in aluminum, and for far less weight savings than the longer tubes on the frame.
There's always titanium... The only big drawback is the cost...
I wonder if it's already implemented.
Yeah. It's called steel and it's too heavy to put in space in the quantities needed for a space station.
As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.