Zerosteel

From SaschaWiki

Zerosteel is the common adopted nom for any modern metal alloy manufactured in a zero-gravity environment. Generally these are steel alloys but there are many exceptions. The term 'zerosteel' was first used by the PERMANENT Corporation to describe their perfect matrix carbon steel product (which did not actually have a perfect matrix) but the term has found wider usage and is now used technically.

In practical materials science, metal alloys produced in zero gravity environments are valuable because the lack of convection currents in the molten metal results in a more regular molecular lattice, resulting in stronger material.

It is theoretically possible to create Zerosteel on Earth using droptubes, but not economically feasible. Since the establishment of the Orbital ring and the Lunar colonies it has been realistically plausible to create the material in orbit and transport it in small quantities to Earth. Zerosteel is used more widely in offworld endeavours where the great expense of shuttling it down to Earth makes it more economically viable.

Zerosteel is used in the construction of devices which must regularly survive extremes of stress or temperature such as turbine fan blades or atmospheric re-entry vehicles.

The development of nanotech has allowed for the construction of even more regular, and thus stronger, metal alloys to be created, albeit at even even expense. On Earth the cost of Nanosteel is not significantly higher than that of Zerosteel and so it is used relatively widely.