U.S. Cuts Price on Sole Product Made in Space
The price of the only commercial product made in space has been lowered so that almost anyone can afford to buy a few thousand of them.
The product is a plastic ball so tiny that 2,500 of them lined up equal one inch. Billions were made in experiments on five space shuttle flights. The weight of all the billions of tiny balls is about one ounce.
Since all are the same diameter--10 microns--the balls have become the standard by which to measure other tiny particles and to calibrate sensitive medical and scientific equipment.
“They’ve become the new United States standard reference material,” said Dale Kornfeld, a research chemist with the Marshall Space Flight Center. “They’re so precise that everything else in that general size range will be measured against our little spheres.”
Many Buyers
Customers include pharmaceutical houses, manufacturers of blood-cell counting machines, the food industry and government agencies that regulate food, drugs and pollution.
The balls were first offered for sale in five-milliliter vials on July 17, 1985. Each of the 600 vials produced contains about 30 million balls.
The vials sell for $386 each, and so far about 300 have been sold, said Roger Rensberger of the Commerce Department’s National Bureau of Standards in Gaithersburg, Md.
But who needs 30 million of them?
The answer was obvious, so the bureau decided to sell standard microscopic slides, each containing a few thousand of the 10-micron balls captured in an air bubble. The slides went on sale for $77 last fall. Their official name is Standard Reference Material 1965, Microsphere Slide, 10-Micrometer Polystyrene Spheres.
