5 for 50: 5 Polymers that are out of this world

From the Mercury Program to Mars, Apollo to Artemis, the Space Shuttle to SpaceX, elastomers, in all their earthly iterations, have found a home in air and space.

Even the 19th-century origins of rubber, where vulcanization finds its etymology in the term Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, demonstrate that the compound perhaps always had aspirations beyond terra firma.

Indeed, rubber, plastics, silicones and every polymer in between have made air and space travel possible, from the textile fabric fashioned to the airfoil of the Wright Flyer to the fabric fashioned around the Goodyear Blimp.

In this issue, we will take a look at the tiniest cross-section of polymers in aerospace, five instances over five decades when such material truly has been out of this world.

In each issue leading up to our special 50th Anniversary issue on Aug. 9, we'll present a new list of 5. When that arrives, you'll have a total of 50 things that have helped to define the rubber industry's last five decades.

1. Goodyear takes flight

When the "Spirit of Goodyear" was grounded in 2014 after 14 years of iconic marketing and event coverage, there were new, advanced, fly-by-wire airships waiting in the wings, dirigibles that are considered semi-rigid rather than non-rigid. These zeppelins, Wingfoots One, Two and Three, replaced the Spirit of Innovation (retired in 2017), the Spirit of America (2015) and the Spirit of Goodyear. All six were constructed in Suffield, Ohio, mere minutes from Akron, the Rubber Capital of the World, where the original Goodyear Airdock, purpose-built for airships in 1929, still exists. The Spirit of Goodyear provided aerial coverage of the Daytona 500 on Feb. 23, 2014, to mark its final flight.

2. Toyota aims for the moon

Toyota is quite literally shooting for the moon with its Lunar Cruiser, a six-wheeled, pressurized, hydrogen-powered moon rover, replete with specialized polymers, that it hopes to see traveling the rocky lunar surface within a decade. A reference to the company's Land Cruiser, the vehicle is in many senses representative of Toyota President Akio Toyoda's vision to transform Japan's biggest auto manufacturer. While Tesla CEO Elon Musk used SpaceX to launch a Roadster into orbit around the sun, Toyota might be the first manufacturer to have a wheeled vehicle for humans on another heavenly body since General Motors worked on the first moon buggies during the Apollo Program.

3. Trelleborg is star gazing

Trelleborg A.B., one of the heavy hitters in off-shore marine environment seal and dampening equipment, aims to be part of this recent renaissance in astronomy and astrophysics with its inflatable and compression seals for the Extremely Large Telescope, nearly complete atop a 10,000-foot mountain in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile. Trelleborg entered a $588,000 contract with Cimolai S.p.A. to supply the seals, which are handmade and durable, helping to maintain the pressurized atmosphere within the ELT's classic dome shape. The ELT, owned and operated by the European Southern Observatory, is expected to see "first light" in 2025.

4. NuSil goes to space

It is no coincidence that a period of great growth occurred in the silicone industry in concert with the golden age of space exploration, beginning 70 years ago with the Mercury Program and carrying through the 1950s and 1960s with the Gemini and Apollo programs. But the seals and coatings used in these early missions were not made from high-purity silicone, and they tended to leak on re-entry. Fast forward to 1979 and the onset of NASA's iconic Space Shuttle program—and the birth of NuSil Technology L.L.C. in California. The silicone industry accelerated once again, as NuSil produced its first certified space-grade silicone in 1981—the same year that STS-1 (Columbia) blasted off from Kennedy Space Center.

5. One giant leap for Mechanical Rubber

Mechanical Rubber Products Co. Inc., based in Warwick, N.Y., which produces aluminum alloys, thermosets and thermoplastics, already boasts contracts with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Airbus, Northrop, Bombardier and Learjet. The company that began in 1941 recently was chosen as a supplier for mounting pads for the International Space Station, after NASA engineers discovered a Mechanical Rubber compound that met their strict requirements for space applications. Mechanical Rubber also played a small part in NASA's iconic Apollo 11 moon landing mission in July 1969, supplying a high-pressure window gasket for the Lunar Excursion Module, according to Mechanical Rubber President Cedric Glasper.