Another instance of 'Super Ice' or as named in the article 'Pykrete' in science fiction is in Neal Stephenson's Novel from 2015: Seveneves.

The substance is used in space for the construction of temporary habitats. I suppose this is plausible if you manage to find a large source of ice and bring it into a stable orbit. It won't melt into liquid, and perhaps the reinforcing fibers could help prevent sublimation.

A lot of the novel strained my ability to suspend disbelief, but the overall scope and ambition is so awesome I was able to forgive the poor editing. It's attempting to be hard sci-fi, much of the novel is taken up by technical descriptions that could only appeal to an engineer-minded person.

> A lot of the novel strained my ability to suspend disbelief, but the overall scope and ambition is so awesome

While the 2nd half of the book is definitely still sci-fi territory, the first part is slowly getting into the plausible tech realm, 12 years after the book was written. We now have a much stronger space industry, and probably could match or exceed the payload to orbit in 2 years from the book (if everyone would work towards the same goal, which is still a bit of fantasy but hey...)

> getting into the plausible tech realm

Except bringing an asteroid all the way down to the ISS. That part was uncharacteristically thoughtless, I think.

It basically enabled the plot and mostly happened 'off camera'. The parts about the management of radiation was pretty cool though. Because if it I earmarked "Ichi-F: A Worker's Graphic Memoir of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant" to read later on.

Side note, but I have a hard time thinking of Seveneves in halves; isn't it 3 distinct parts?

Mainly I remember skimming the middle third because it felt like such a drag.

You could cleanly think about it in three parts, but the time jump in the middle which involves a whole new set of characters is another way to split it.

Yes the book itself is broken into 3 parts but if you're looking at it from a scientific plausibility scale parts 1 & 2 are in the same vicinity of that scale where part 3 jumps a good ways into more traditional scifi levels of plausibility.

Heh, true. My brain went into "pre space" and "post space" as halves :)

pykrete isnt a scifi material. its a ww2 idea the brits had for making an ice based aircraft carrier

I saw the title and thought "pykrete". Here's the aircraft carrier in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

I'm still salty over the Kickstarter he ran about a sword fighting video game that was, at the time, the highest valued project in Kickstarter history, and he just... gave up and released nothing.

The Wikipedia article mentions how this happened with an anti-AIDS medication called ritonavir. I watched this video by Veritasium on that situation a while back; I recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksn5yrsC3Wg

I literally picked up Cat's Cradle for first time in decades this weekend. Funny how these things line up.