Resilium

What do you mean, no thermal signature? They're right here!

— Anonymous, 383

Resilium is a synthetic resin with extremely high heat capacity. It is commonly used in heat shielding and stealth composites, as well as composite armor or simply clothing. Resilium is often associated to other materials to improve their thermal capacity without compromising on their physical properties The resin's hydrophobicity is also used to make some materials waterproof. This is all primarily done through simple coating, providing insulating properties to a material rather easily, but some other methods include alloying or combining it with polymers. This ease of use combined with exceptional thermal capacity have made the resin highly popular in industrial applications, and more recently in clothing fashion.

This synthetic resin is entirely manufactured in zero-g to provide a high-purity material, as impurities in the resin could cause some brittleness issues once applied. These resilium factories can be found in most industrial regions of the world, as its manufacturing process is actually relatively simple. This has made Resilium present in many everyday items and machines, though it isn't as omnipresent as calfen. To this day, however, only industrial powers can produce resilium in large quantities, as the manufacturing process is still made of numerous tasks that, while individually simple, requires heavy infrastructure to be performed adequately. The major producers of resilium are, of course, the Vestan Federation and the Enodian Ascendancy.

Science Placeholder by Jonathan M.K. Dornell

Type:
Material
Discovered:
297
Major Users:
Vestan Federation
Enodian Ascendancy
Elysian Security Organization
Unity Concord
Non-Aligned Nomad Fleets

Usage

Industrial

Resilium is primarily used in industrial applications as a component of most modern heat shields. Its extremely high thermal capacity makes it ideal to absorb excess heat on machinery or on transatmospheric aircrafts. Unfortunately, its low thermal conductivity makes it more difficult to purge the excess heat once it has been absorbed.

Military

Resilium is also used in some composite armor patterns to absorb the heat generated by enemy projectiles. In this configuration, it is often found in layers of polymer sheets sandwiched between other materials such as calfen or titanium alloys. The result is a very effective armor capable of greatly diminishing the effectiveness of most projectiles.

Clothing

Last but not least, resilium can also be found in pieces of clothing such as long coats, jackets or pants. By coating the textile fibers in a very thin but homogeneous layer of resilium, such clothing can absorb a lot more heat that through simple textiles. As an added bonus, this process also makes the textile waterproof due to the resin's physical behavior.

History

Resilium was initially created by the Federation to answer a need for high thermal capacity materials for construction on Asteria. Research on the subject started with the Asterian Restoration Initiative to assist in the initiative's endeavor, but the initiative came to an end more than a decade before resilium was discovered. This would eventually happen in 297 when Vestan scientists finally cracked the last setbacks. Resilium quickly became a huge commercial and technological success, and factories began to produce the new resin at full throttle to supply the booming demand. During these early years, many criminals attempted to steal the manufacturing methods or simply raided supply convoys, but their lack of infrastructure prevented them to manufacture any, leaving them dependent on raids to procure the material.

Some eighty years later, resilium has been further refined and made available for almost any application, from clothes to military-grade heat shielding. The material became rather cheap after the production matched the demand, making it widely available in addition to being applicable. Studies have also been performed to assess the health risks of resilium fragments, but these have revealed that resilium particles are about as dangerous as any particle, should they be inhaled.