This is about a ship with three sapphire hulls or a probe with less to an outer planet orbit. There are various radiations to consider, and meteorites. Electron radiation is conducted away better by metals than by ceramics. It isn't strong enough to worry about the whole hull being melted by a point source. Your wire or sheet risks being melted and breaking or forming insulator voids so the conduction path through the sapphire should have a high cross section and be of a high enough melting temp material. If point sources are the main threat, local refractory metal nanoparticle inclusions would keep a ceramic ring (the brackets) around the point source from melting.(o). Ion radiation sources are there at various eVs:
a) Through the crystal plane they can travel easier. It will be necessary to shield the plane surface edges by stacking a different grain atop, or adding metal wires.
b) Both nuclei and electrons interact with ions to stop them, causing lattice damage. There is enough heat and electricity generated to not want a long conducting wire lest an "o-sized" source melt a whole hull section. Electrically and heat conducting metal ovals mm to decimeters long, will conduct away from the ion impact to where the max radiation safe conduction length away from the impact is. Along these rays from impact, will be refractory nanoparticles to prevent excess heating locally.
c) There are fracture and local explosion risks from ions. Tough materials are conventionally preferred as they stop crack fronts, but they tend to be ductile and thus their bonds slide and rip during a bad radiation event, vacuum pressure, or meteorite impact. Here, our single grained sapphire will have one (of 3) especially weak grain plane. We will place visible pacman clips of ductile metals along the perpendicular plane to maybe all 3. At shallow tangents the crack is likely to skip to, lesser pacmans will be placed having clamped the future crack. Where compression from heat is an explosive risk, voids are engineered to permit some give.
d) Longer-term ion damage results in new plates being attached to the outer hull.
For meteorites, there is catastrophic impact damage. Ideally the outermost shell has jagged crystal planes to crumble it, while a ductile interlaced mat absorbs the initial shockwave and transfers it around the ship. IDK which mats are space-worthy. Refractory nanoparticles towards the outer hull help keep the sapphire's material properties mostly colder/better. Towards the inner hull, an issue becomes cracks leading to depressurization. Here, tough inclusions, maybe Tungsten, are best.
For ion engines, using electricity metamaterials seems fire/blackout risky, but might function as turbo-chargers. You'd want a curved ion exit to aovid micro-meteorite tail-pipe impacts.
a) Through the crystal plane they can travel easier. It will be necessary to shield the plane surface edges by stacking a different grain atop, or adding metal wires.
b) Both nuclei and electrons interact with ions to stop them, causing lattice damage. There is enough heat and electricity generated to not want a long conducting wire lest an "o-sized" source melt a whole hull section. Electrically and heat conducting metal ovals mm to decimeters long, will conduct away from the ion impact to where the max radiation safe conduction length away from the impact is. Along these rays from impact, will be refractory nanoparticles to prevent excess heating locally.
c) There are fracture and local explosion risks from ions. Tough materials are conventionally preferred as they stop crack fronts, but they tend to be ductile and thus their bonds slide and rip during a bad radiation event, vacuum pressure, or meteorite impact. Here, our single grained sapphire will have one (of 3) especially weak grain plane. We will place visible pacman clips of ductile metals along the perpendicular plane to maybe all 3. At shallow tangents the crack is likely to skip to, lesser pacmans will be placed having clamped the future crack. Where compression from heat is an explosive risk, voids are engineered to permit some give.
d) Longer-term ion damage results in new plates being attached to the outer hull.
For meteorites, there is catastrophic impact damage. Ideally the outermost shell has jagged crystal planes to crumble it, while a ductile interlaced mat absorbs the initial shockwave and transfers it around the ship. IDK which mats are space-worthy. Refractory nanoparticles towards the outer hull help keep the sapphire's material properties mostly colder/better. Towards the inner hull, an issue becomes cracks leading to depressurization. Here, tough inclusions, maybe Tungsten, are best.
For ion engines, using electricity metamaterials seems fire/blackout risky, but might function as turbo-chargers. You'd want a curved ion exit to aovid micro-meteorite tail-pipe impacts.
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