[Lord Soth]

Has anyone heard anything about the development of body armor made from spider silk? I heard about it in a magazine a while back. What has become of its development? Also, how much better or worse would it be than say level 4 armor at stopping rifle rounds?

[SquirrelNuts]

I saw a program on TLC/Discovery Channel about the scientific powers behidn the X-Men. Spider silk was one of them, but I do not remember anything about body armor. Its uses were in rope.

-SquirrelNuts

[winstonsmith]

this might be a little OT, but I heard from many sources about a "goat spider" that is a spider mixed with a goat. basically, it is a goat exxcept it ... erm.. 'excretes" spider webs.

[CGofMP]

I was about to throw the BS flag... but darned if this isnt reality....

Its not feces but milk as I read it.

Check out the story on ABC (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/biotechgoats000618.html)

Charles

[SquirrelNuts]

There is in fact a goat with a spider gene. It allows the goat to make one specific kind of silk (out of several kinds).

-SquirrelNuts

[Feanaro]

Silk has is stronger than Kevlar(about twice as strong, sources vary), per pound. And Kevlar is about four to six times stronger than steel(again, sources vary. Memory says five and I'm too lazy to search more than a page of stuff from Google).

So with a nice jacket to surround the silk and some steel/ceramic inserts it would be a great bullet stopper. They think...

[Triad]

I saw something on Discovery or THC about body armor. They mentioned that it has problems in body armor applications. Basically the spider silk is too elastic. They said they could make a shirt out of spider silk that was the same weight as a cotton shirt, yet it would stop a .308 Win. from penetrating. There is a catch of course. The .308 bullet wouldn't go through the shirt, but it would go through the guy wearing it taking the fabric with it.

[CGofMP]

well... at least that would make the job of the forensics specialist easier. Least they could find the bullet that killed ya!

[mummac]

i'm still scratching my head over spider-goats.

[Feanaro]

A hard backing might make it more viable. Or maybe it wouldn't. I've never tried shooting spider silk. ;)

BTW, they are not quite spider-goats. They have one gene changed so that when they produce milk they also produce spider silk. So they are still goats, pretty much.

[Triad]

The show I saw that had the spider goats said they were something like 1/70,000 spider. IIRC they don't actually produce spider silk, they produce a protein that has to be extracted from the milk and then formed into silk.

Hard backing would probably work, but one of the big advantages with spider silk armor is that it should be much lighter and far less bulky and adding hard plates would largely negate that I think.

[Feanaro]

I probably should have included this in the last post but a strong and tight weave would make it less flexible, me thinks. 'Course I know nothing about such things. :)

[Matt G]

In the far East, it is not uncommon for ballistic vests to be made of silk. This is more of an economic issue, though, as they've far more silk than Kevlar.

I've got to admit, I was about to hoist the "B.S." flag, too, regarding the spider-milk goats. That's pretty nifty. Note the copyright on the story is 2000, though. So one wonders: What's become of the goats? Where's my bulletproof feta angora silk sweater? :)

[Kevlarman]

I suppose a vest made up of a combination of silk/Kevlar would be a good alternative. Less Kevlar used, but still retains the strength of a normal vest.

[Matt G]

ANYTHING to make these things thinner, more flexible, and more breathable! [Reaching under stupid NIJ-compliant and thus non-breathable vest to scratch.]

[atek3]

funny you should say that about the 308. Thats essentially what the mongols did. The rode fast horses using silk shirts for "armor". Long bow shots would pierce them, but not the shirt, so extracting the arrow was a simple matter of pulling the shirt taut, then the wound was cared for, survival rates were very high :)

However zylon is far better for body armor than kevlar or silk,

http://www.toyobo.co.jp/e/seihin/kc/pbo/

best in the world right now, unfortunatly the patent is owned by toyobo.

atek3

[pax]

Moved to accessories.

pax

[Kevlarman]

There has been much debate about the temperature resistance of Zylon over here:

http://64.177.53.248/cgi-bin/tacticalubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&forum=M.D.+Labs+&number=5&DaysPrune=1000&SUBMIT=Go

Very interesting stuff.

[atek3]

whoa, bigtime

[Matt G]

Yikes! (http://64.177.53.248/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000265.html)