Superconductors

Worldwide, the current market for HTS wire is estimated to be US$30 billion, according to Castellani, and it is expected to grow rapidly.

A backstage pass

The University of Houston has licensed this new wire-making technology to MetOx, a company founded in 1997. MetOx plans to begin full-scale production of this high-quality HTS wire in 2003, Castellani says.

Not surprisingly, the primary scientist for the NASA group at TcSAM, Dr. Alex Ignatiev, can't reveal exactly how they make their HTS wire. The technologies springing from these NASA/industry research partnerships must be patented to achieve NASA's goal of using space to benefit American businesses, Ignatiev says.

Image courtesy NASA The Wake Shield Facility being held out in space by the shuttle's robot arm.

He will, however, share the dinner-napkin sketch.

Basically, the wire is made by growing a thin film of the superconductor only a few microns thick (thousandths of a millimetre) onto a flexible foundation. This well-known production method was improved upon in part through "Wake Shield" experiments flown on the space shuttle to learn about growing thin films in the hard vacuum of space.

"We learned how to grow higher-quality oxide thin films from the shuttle experiments, and used that in the lab to improve the quality of our superconducting films," Ignatiev says.

In the years to come, that quality will translate into improvements in dozens of industries from power generation to medical care. Keep an eye on this one: the glamorous career of superconductors has only just begun.