Re: "Mutation City", helicopter scene

From: Ed Rudnicki <erudnick_at_pica.army.mil>
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 96 15:37:22 EDT

>>>Callie's fashion tastes kinda run toward designer names like Lagerfeld
>>>and Dior, where Felina's would favour Kevlar.
>
>Sorry, obscure gag. Christine Dior and Karl Lagerfeld are famous women's
>fashion designers, where "Kevlar" is a bullet resistant material used in the
>making of "bulletproof vests" and, oddly enough, race cars.
>
>I guess it's so if you speed in Feral's jurisdiction, they can't shoot out the
>gas tank.

Kevlar is an aramid fiber with exceptional tensile strength per unit
weight. When woven into a textile it becomes a useful bullet
resistant material. Note that nylon will do the same thing, but it
takes a lot more material.

Kevlar ends up being used anywhere one wants a lightweight, strong
composite structure. It ends up replacing the glass fibers in
glass-reinforced plastc ("fiberglass"): the resultant structures are
substantially lighter, though the cost is greater.

Kevlar armor can be used as a rigid structural material and as
"soft" armor, like the "bulletproof vests". The soft armor is more
efficient at stopping ballistic threats, as the individual threads
can "stretch" as they deform and decelerate the projectile.

A newer, better material is Spectra, a long-chain polyethylene fiber
developed by Allied (Kevlar is DuPont's; there's a similar German
aramid called Twaron, and the Russians market their own too).





Ed Rudnicki
erudnick_at_pica.army.mil
Oculis numquam claudentibus

Received on Fri Apr 26 1996 - 16:21:24 PDT