Unobtainium

Unobtainium is a term used in fiction, engineering, and common situations for a material ideal for a particular application but impractically hard to get. Unobtainium originally referred to materials that do not exist at all, but can also be used to describe real materials that are unavailable due to extreme rarity or cost. Less commonly, it can mean a device with desirable engineering properties for an application that are exceedingly difficult or impossible to achieve.

The properties of any particular example of unobtainium depend on the intended use. For example, a pulley made of unobtainium might be massless and frictionless. But for a nuclear rocket, unobtainium might have the needed qualities of lightness, strength at high temperatures, and resistance to radiation damage: A combination of all three qualities is impossible with today's materials. The concept of unobtainium is often applied hand-wavingly, flippantly, or humorously.

The word " unobtainium" derives humorously from " unobtainable", with ''-ium'', a suffix for chemical element names. It predates the similar-sounding systematic element names, such as ununennium. An alternate spelling, unobtanium, is sometimes used, perhaps based on the spelling of real elements like titanium and uranium.

Engineering origin

Since the late 1950s, aerospace engineers have used the term "unobtainium" when referring to unusual or costly materials, or when theoretically considering a material perfect for their needs in all respects, except that it does not exist.

"Unobtainium, n. A substance having the exact high test properties required for a piece of hardware or other item of use, but not obtainable either because it theoretically cannot exist or because technology is insufficiently advanced to produce it. Humorous or ironical." Listed in "Interim Glossary, Aero-Space Terms," as compiled by Woodford Heflin and published in February 1958 by the Air University of the US Air Force.Since at least the 1950s
Hansen, James R. (1987) "Engineer in Charge: A History of the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, 1917–1958." The NASA History Series, sp-4305.
Chapter 12, recounting an October 1957 meeting, mentions the problems caused by "the lack of a superior high-temperature material (which the Langley structures people dubbed 'unobtainium')" This paragraph in turn cites Becker, John V.
The Development of Winged Reentry Vehicles, 1952–1963
" unpublished, dated 23 May 1983.

By the 1990s, the term was in wide use, even in formal engineering papers such as "Towards unobtainium /nowiki>new composite materials for space applications/nowiki>."

The word "unobtainium" may well have been coined in the aerospace industry to refer to materials capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures expected in re-entry. Aerospace engineers are frequently tempted to design aircraft which require parts with strength or resilience beyond that of currently available materials.

Later, 'unobtainium' became an engineering term for practical materials that really exist, but are difficult to get. For example, during the development of the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, Lockheed engineers at the " Skunk Works" under Clarence "Kelly" Johnson used 'unobtainium' as a dysphemism for titanium. Titanium allowed a higher strength-to-weight ratio at the high temperatures the Blackbird would reach, but its availability was restricted because the Soviet Union controlled its supply. This created a problem for the U.S. during the Cold War because the Blackbird required huge amounts of titanium (and subsequent U.S. military aircraft such as the F-15, F-18, and F-22 fighters and the B-1 bomber required relatively large amounts of it as well).

Contemporary popularization

By 2010, the term had diffused beyond engineering, and now can appear in the headlines of mainstream newspapers, especially to describe the commercially useful rare earth elements (particularly terbium, erbium, dysprosium, yttrium, and neodymium). These are essential to the performance of consumer electronics and green technology, but the projected demand for them so outstrips their current supply that they are called "unobtainiums" within the ore industry and by commentators on the US Congressional hearings into the supply security of rare-earths.

'Unobtainium' has come to be used as a synonym for "unobtainable" among people who are neither science fiction fans nor engineers to denote an object that actually exists, but which is very hard to obtain either because of high price (sometimes referred to as "unaffordium") or limited availability. It usually refers to a very high-end and desirable product. Examples are rear cassettes in the mountain biking community, parts that are no longer available for old-car enthusiasts, parts for reel-to-reel audio-tape recorders, and rare vacuum tubes such as the 1L6 or WD-11 that can now cost more than the equipment in which they were fitted.

There have been repeated attempts to attribute the name to a real material. Space elevator research has long used "unobtainium" to describe a material with the necessary characteristics, but carbon nanotubes might have these characteristics. The eyewear and fashion wear company Oakley, Inc. also frequently denotes the material used for many of their eyeglass nosepieces and earpieces, which has the unusual property of increasing tackiness and thus grip when wet, as unobtanium.

Science fiction

It was first used in '' The Core'' in 2003, and also used in James Cameron's 2009 movie '' Avatar'', as a substance that was named "unobtanium". In ''Avatar'', it is a room-temperature superconductor mined on the fictional moon Pandora that makes crewed interstellar space travel to the planet financially feasible.

Similar terms

The term handwavium (suggesting handwaving) is another term for this hypothetical material, as are buzzwordium, impossibrium, raritanium, and hardtofindium.

The term (also spelled with variants such as illudium) has been used to describe a material which has "eluded" attempts to develop it. This was mentioned in several Looney Tunes cartoons, where Marvin the Martian tried (unsuccessfully) to use his "Eludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator" to blow up the Earth.

Another largely synonymous term is wishalloy, although the sense is often subtly different in that a wishalloy usually does not exist at all, whereas unobtainium may merely be unavailable.

A similar conceptual material in alchemy is the philosopher's stone, a mythical substance with the ability to turn lead into gold, or bestow immortality and youth. While the search to find such a substance was not successful, it did lead to discovery of a new element: phosphorus."Experts Warn of Impending Phosphorus Crisis"
by Hilmar Schmundt, '' Spiegel'', 21 April 2010

See also

* List of fictional elements, materials, isotopes and subatomic particles
* Materials science in science fiction
* Dysprosium, a real element whose name means "hard to get"

References

External links

{{wiktionary, unobtainium, unobtanium

World Wide Words — Unobtanium

TV Tropes - Unobtainium

Fictional materials
Placeholder names
Avatar (franchise)

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