Normal Freezing Space Furnace (NFSF)
Designed by Drazen E. Premate and Bill Aldrich
Normal Freezing Space Furnace (NFSF) was designed by Drazen E. Premate and Bill Aldrich between 1982 and 1987 under the International Space Corporation (ISC), a private company formed by Drazen in 1982. This furnace was supposed to fly inside the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle attached to a special platform on seven Shuttle flights starting in November 1987 and with Drazen as a mission specialist on several flights.
NFSF was then, and is still today (2010), the largest space furnace ever built in the world designed to grow electronic crystals and multi-component materials in zero gravity of space. Shuttle Challenger accident in January 1986 stopped this project and eventually also closed ISC in October of 1988 once NASA decided to take out all of commercial projects from the Shuttle cargo bay and flights for safety reasons. This decision by NASA effectively killed the commercial Materials Processing in Space (MPS) effort taking place at that time.
NFSF was designed to utilize directional solidification technique to solidify tri-component and very expensive crystals in space such as Mercury Cadmium Telluride shown below made in ISC’s NFSF on the ground. It was also designed to make multi-component materials that could never be made on the ground as they separate before they solidify due to their density difference thus NFSF could make brand new materials in zero gravity of space that are non-existent on the planet Earth. We call them Super Space Materials (SSM).
Zero gravity of space allows for a more perfect and multi-component crystal like materials to be grown. Use of such tri-component crystal is in the high-speed switching and infrared detection circuits. Estimated market value of such pure space made crystals with high end electronic applications is at $200,000-$300,000/pound. Drazen is still the only East European with a Masters Degree in Space Technology obtained from Florida Institute of Technology at Melbourne, Florida. (Photos of NFSF from slides)
ISS plans to bring back several variations of this kind of space furnace and fly them into zero-g of space when a safe return of such space made Superior Crystals and Super Space Materials is possible again after the retirement of the Space Shuttle.
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