If you cut yourself, your blood clots to prevent further bleeding. Hidden and protected by the scab it formed, your body can start its repairs.

Scientist studied this process and thought, “Wouldn’t it be nifty if we could somehow replicate this method for spacecrafts?” A bit farfetched isn’t it! Luckily scientists don’t rely on public opinion to aid their ventures. The laws of logic are much sounder.

Drs Bond and Trask from the Bristol University set out to create a system that would spare astronauts from attempting risky repairs in space.

By studying how blood passes through tissues in tiny capillaries, the Bristol team developed a composite space craft material with tiny glass tubes (each only sixty microns - a thousandth of a millimetre – throughout the material). The tubes contain either a resin, or a chemical setting agent which triggers the resin to polymerise and set hard. If the material is stressed or cracked, the tubes will rupture allowing the two clotting components to escape and mix, creating a plug - and ‘Voila!’ the breach is stopped.

Clever bunnies, aren’t they?!

Source: Naked Scientist