Technological advancement in this day and age goes hand in hand with pushing boundaries in almost all industrial sectors, as we try to explore what is achievable on Earth and beyond. These boundaries are very often defined by the materials and methods we use to travel, communicate, detect and visualise, produce energy, or even cure our ailments.
The evolution of our species appears to be accompanied by an insatiable hunger to realise our increasingly ambitious goals at neck-breaking speed. To a great extent, we operate as if we were running out of time. This might actually not be entirely unfounded considering the continuous increase in world population, the rapidly declining soil health, and our mounting collective needs in energy, housing, and sustenance. This bleak reality pushes us, in a way, to improve the efficiency of the ways with which we produce energy – preferably in environmentally-friendly manners – and discover more space to live and thrive; the latter translates into our recently intensified efforts towards space exploration.
When it comes to powering interstellar travel, nuclear energy is the only viable option that our species currently possesses; serendipitously, nuclear energy is also a low-carbon energy source that can help us combat global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions on Earth.
The common denominator between innovative materials needed for the deployment of advanced nuclear systems (both fission and fusion) as well as for space exploration is the extreme service environments in which materials must perform reliably.
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