Superconducting Spaceships?

Most recent answer: 10/19/2011

Q:
Are most material achieve superconducting state near 0 kelvin in space? This means any spaceships beyond Earth atmosphere theoretically are superconducting and hence could do teleport in space like electrons.
- SnakeEater (age 35)
Singapore
A:
Even if a spaceship skin were to cool to about 2.7K, the temperature of the background radiation, that would not be cold enough for most materials to superconduct. Of course a thin niobium skin would superconduct at that temperature. However, there are electronics and sometimes people inside spaceships generating heat, so I don't believe they typically get nearly that cold. Also, unless the ship has gone very far from the sun, it will be warmed by solar radiation.

Nevertheless, let's say you had a superconducting skin on your spaceship. That doesn't really allow any special teleportation or other tricks.

Mike W.

(published on 10/19/2011)