Interesting Material Sciences Problem

[RobinStarwing]

So, me and a friend were working on something for an RP forum and it got me thinking a bit. The problem is related to a plothole in Sailor Moon (Manga specifically) and it is how does the Crystal Palace and Crystal Tokyo arise?

I started wondering what the Palace itself was made of and started to think about alloys. So I went researching alloys and found a class of them called Complex Metal Alloys (CMA for short) and many of them seem to have shapes that are crystalline from what I read up on them.

The palace itself is a huge structure itself, containing a building at the top about the size of Buckingham Palace itself possibly. This would make it the tallest and biggest thing ever made or what not if it could be really made.

So I posit two questions to the Engineers, aAchitects, and Material Scientists/Chemists for you.

First: Could one create an alloy (CMA) strong enough to make this building a reality and also give it resilience and shape needed? I am putting bets on the reciple to include Carbon and Titanium but I figure there is more here. One of the features besides light weight is strength; i.e. , it can handle up to a Tomahawk Cruise Missile or Hypersonic(Mach 7+) Railgun round hitting it with either none to light/moderate damage to the structure at any one point.

Second: Could such a building be made and what would the superstructure be like? This is the layout given in the Manga for reference. (http://missdream.org/sites/default/files/extras/crystalpalace.jpg) Keep in mind not only does it need to have the above but also must have a crystalline-shape, deal with building sway, and handle Earthquakes/Tsunamis/Typhoons.

Have fun guys and I am hoping to see a potential and plausible explanation that can satisfy

[Krylo]

RE: Both.

No.

Explanation: It is a manga about magical girls doing magical things. It is magic.

[EVILNess]

Explanation: It is a manga about magical girls doing magical things. It is magic.

Ahh, classic "Man that Flies" argument.

Basically, a reference to Superman (But it can be applied to any super-hero really) that refutes any little bullshit claim by calling it insignificant since the complaint in question takes place in a world where there is a man who can fly.

[Krylo]

Not really.

The man who flies argument suggests that internal inconsistencies aren't important because there is a man who flies and ignores that the flying man is explained in a logically consistent manner with the rules of the universe in question.

I.E. There's no explanation for why Lex's kryptonite cancer lets him fire kryptonite rays in some continuities. That is stupid*. AND IT IS. Because Superman pretends to follow physics to some limited degree, whitewashing Superman's ability to fly with super charged powers from the yellow sun, and his weakness to kryptonite as his body having some kind of similar molecular structure.

Granted, that is still stupid given real earth physics, but internally consistent within the physics of the comic.

Lex Luthor firing kryptonite rays because he has cancer is not.

I'm simply pointing out that having a structure that is impossible within OUR world actually doesn't fly in the face of the internal logic of Sailor Moon because Sailor Moon implicitly includes magic in the universe and in the existence of such structures.

I.E. It is magic is actually the canon explanation.

In other words, this is no different than someone saying "Engineers explain how to make a man fly like superman," and someone coming in and saying "That's impossible. Superman is Kryptonian and has super powers that don't exist in our reality."

*Note that whether or not this matters to you depends entirely upon your ability to suspend disbelief in the pursuit of 'awesome'. Also they may have explained it at some point I'm not a huge comic buff, if so substitute with something that wasn't explained.

[RobinStarwing]

Actually, the appearance of the Crystal Palace and Crystal City around it is never explained in the manga or anime at all.

While it is probably magic...this too me is an exercise and wanted to see how creative we could be using physical laws and properties.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

When building large scale structures with the properties that you would request you would need a team of people. It's not about choosing the right materials, the right design of the building, the right construction methods. It is all of these things. So it's not something that can really be answered that easily.

[Krylo]

When building large scale structures with the properties that you would request you would need a team of people. It's not about choosing the right materials, the right design of the building, the right construction methods. It is all of these things. So it's not something that can really be answered that easily.

Pretty sure it got incredibly easy to answer it when he wanted it to take a tomahawk missile and/or a hypersonic velocity round with little to no damage.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Pfft make it out of rubber and it'll bounce back to whomever shot it

But I was really answering this general line of thinking (as in how do we build fictional buildings) rather than the specific inquiry.

[RobinStarwing]

Pretty sure it got incredibly easy to answer it when he wanted it to take a tomahawk missile and/or a hypersonic velocity round with little to no damage.

That would be as much the superstructure as the materials used dude.

Would Carbon Nanotubes be of use at all maybe? At least to help with the supporting superstructure?

Just a thought.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

CNTs are only really strong in a single direction. Missile would explode that bitch hard out.

[Azisien]

CNTs are only really strong in a single direction. Missile would explode that bitch hard out.

Could you stack them in a rotating circular manner (like chitin protein is laid down in many insects) to form super-duper anti-missile armour?

[Loyal]

Given the size of the structure, I'm guessing the use of carbon nanotubes would go beyond "prohibitively expensive" and edge into the realm of "more money than what actually exists."

Barring, of course, magic.

[Azisien]

Moon....Nanotube....Activation!!!!

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Well what people do is they basically inject CNTs as stabilisers into fibres made from other polymers which makes fibres that can be woven into say a combat jacket and they are one of the toughest materials known- if I remember they are about 5 times tougher than spider silk. I don't think anybodies made anything out of them yet.
Except Damascus steel!

But it's still more like stop a bullet than a missile. And like if you want to stop a missile you've got a lot of thinks you have to stop. You have to stop the initial impact of just a big bit of metal flying really fast at you, you need to stop the explosion which applies both lots of heat and lots of force and you'll need to stop sharpnel. Like you could design materials to stop (or at least mitigate) each of these factors but the problem is that the better you stop one thing the worse you are going to stop the others. Surely you're best bet is just fuckloads of metal plates which you go patch up all the time.

[TDK]

Also there pretty much isn't a material that could actually stop the type of railgun shot you are talking about.

Like these things punch through dozens of FEET of solid metal. And these aren't even the ones that are deployed yet. (they are hooked up to a more limited power grid, whereas most battleships of the kind that would have railguns, to my knowledge, are nuclear powered and thus have a little more oomph than your average grid-hookup.)

Like maybe if your walls were absurdly thick, but that still wouldn't even take little to no damage. It just wouldn't actually penetrate the building.

If you wanted to protect against things like that, your best bet would be being deep underground. But that has its own defensive problems.


As an engineer, I would go with magic. Or maybe some kind of superscience? Force fields maybe. :I

[stefan]

its not actually crystal, its sculpted aerogel. the name is just all marketing.

[Overcast]

But isn't aerogel as fragile as a clod of dirt?

[stefan]

But isn't aerogel as fragile as a clod of dirt?

aerogel has a ridonkulous amount of compressive strength.