In microgravity…you don’t need a container. In Day’s initial experiments, the melt–a molten droplet about 1/4 inch in diameter–was held in place inside a hot furnace simply by the pressure of sound waves emitted by an acoustic levitator. With that acoustic levitator, explains Day, ‘we could melt and cool and melt and cool a molten droplet without letting it touch anything.’ As Day had hoped, containerless processing produced a better glass. To his surprise, though, the glass was of even higher quality than theory had predicted. [via] Link.
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Then there’s also the fact that in space, you wouldn’t even need an active furnace to heat the glass. An appropriately designed solar furnace would be a useful addition to any solar powered manufacturing platform and/or asteroid mining facility.