AAWSAP DIRD, Space Access: Where We’ve Been and Where We Could Go, March 2010

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UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOA OFFI&iIAk Ulilii ONkY
The Qu Tube
In the 1990s, a colleague, Ying-Ming Lee, who then worked at MSE in Butte, Montana,
showed the author a copper tube about a foot long that was a heat pipe from his
colleague in Taiwan. If the tip was put into a cup of hot water, the other end almost
instantly was too hot to hold. If it was quickly put into a glass of cold water, that tip
just as quickly became ice cold. As documented in the excerpted page below from the
University of Alabama, Huntsville, Annual Report, the apparent conductivity is greater
than copper and could not be melted, as the thermal energy would be removed so fast
that a significant temperature rise could not be attained. This could have significant
industrial application for the United States. The late Clark Hawk had obtained a 10­
foot-long Qu tube and tested it in his laboratory. The results were published in the
University of Alabama, Huntsville, Annual Report. However, as Clark Hawk discovered,
the Chinese team associated with Professor Qu in mainland China was not about to let
this discovery into American hands. Plus his team was composed of a number of
young, ambitious technocrats who thought they knew how to make their fortune. So
both Ying-Ming's and Clark's attempts to advance beyond a demonstration tube ended
in frustration .
Any attempt to open the tube results in failure, as whatever is in the
tube reacts into an inert powder. The author has two smaller tubes in his possession.
With applications including hypersonic vehicles, nuclear power plants, and electronic
cooling, these devices would lead to an economic breakthrough in practical thermal
control.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOlil OFFICiIAk U&lii 8HL\I
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