WASHINGTON -
he said. Such a brush is commonly available at hardware and paint stores and is routinely used by millions of homeowners when painting their houses.
For spacecraft repair, said O'Keefe, the foam brush is an elegant piece of hardware.
O'Keefe said the compound, which he did not identify, has been tested with an electrical arc at 3,000 degrees, the temperature encountered during shuttle re-entry. Space suited astronauts, he said, are testing application of the compound in a zero gravity airplane, a KC135 that can be flown in a way to give a few seconds of relative weightlessness. The administrator said the patching technique is still being refined, but the early studies show the problem may be relatively easy to solve. 17
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