SA putty holds Apollo together
2009-07-21 08:33
Cape Town - South Africa is barely a single grain of sand in our solar system, but 40 years ago, something South African and a little sticky, travelled the 380 000km to the moon: Pratley Putty Gum.
This sticky substance, an invention of the engineer from Johannesburg, George Pratley, was used to keep parts of the Apollo 11 expedition's landing vehicle stuck together.
That was the only South African invention which went along to the moon. On Monday, exactly 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon on July 20 1969.
Pratley developed the gum during the 1960s. Among other things, he used it for a robot named Humphrey, which he built from metal waste, gluing the robot parts together with his own invention, said Mark Bell, the Pratley group's sales manager on Monday.
The original high-power Pratley which was used for the Apollo mission's vehicle, is still used today, from the Middle-East to the USA.
Exceptionally strong
This particular gum is exceptionally strong and is used in, among others, swimming pool sealing work, since it can also cling under water, said Bell.
Wood and metal can also be glued together with Pratley, and it has even been used to fix a crack in San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge.
Pratley, who died in 1983, established his company in 1948. Today, the Pratley group, who do business from Krugersdorp, export 800 products worldwide, among which 300 of Pratley's patents.
He mostly developed industrial products, especially for the mining sector.
Dr Claire Flanagan, director of the Witwatersrand University's planetarium, said it's far more difficult to get a human into space than science fiction books and films make it seem.
"Enormous engineering projects are involved, and one single mistake could be catastrophic, as we've seen in the disastrous Challenger explosion (1986). In future humans will probably establish a permanent station on the moon, or go to Mars, but I don't think it'll happen anytime soon."