Blog - Forum

Back in January, I tried this $25 air mattress.

Unfortunately, that first one was accidentally punctured by me lying on top of some hard granola bar crumbs.

I recently got a second one, and this time, I took the precaution of covering it with a sheet. But, I think I may have accidentally overinflated it, so that one's useless now too.

And I found out too late that I probably should have tried to sandpaper away the fuzzy material on the top side of the mattress where the holes appeared, before trying to apply the single patch each airbed came with. Oh, well.

I miss my airbeds, since I think they were the most comfortable mattresses I ever used - even better than a friend's waterbed.

But, after reading this scary article, I'm sort of glad to be rid of them, even though I'm not sure whether my airbeds were actually made of bad materials or not. They definitely had a strong smell when I first got them, though that mostly went away in maybe a few days:

I'm even more skittish about the possible toxins in the kinds of glue often used to fix air mattresses, so, repairing them with superglue or something is unfortunately not an option for me. And duct tape didn't work.

I guess my ideal airbed would be made of definitely safe, non-toxic, unsmelly materials, and would be practically indestructible, and even impervious to cat claws.

I have an office chair which is amazingly resistant to cat claws - even tremendously more resistant than my cat's mostly shredded scratching post which was specifically made for cats.

My cat loves that office chair, and I'm sure a huge king-size airbed covered in the same material would probably delight him.

I wonder if perhaps these cow airbeds are more durable than most or all available human airbeds? They must be extremely durable if they can survive a cow laying on them.

I wish someone would make human airbeds which are that durable, and yet as comfortable as my former airbeds. And which my cat can enjoy too without destroying it. I definitely can't keep buying $25 airbeds that lasted maybe a month (1st one) or perhaps a couple of weeks (2nd one).

I think it's really sweet that some people care so much about cows as to create, sell, or buy cow airbeds.

Heartfelt applause to all the makers, sellers, and buyers of cow airbeds!

And I believe if they ever start selling an incredibly durable yet comfortable human airbed made of good, safe, healthy materials, that might have an extremely good chance of becoming the most popular product in the human airbed market.

   ▲ Top  ▼ Bottom  △ TOC   Up ↑

Spider silk: the ultimate material for an air mattress?

Tuesday, March 27th, 2018 20:30:59 GMT

Ideas

I'm still missing my now-useless way too fragile airbeds, which I already wrote about in this previous blog post.

I miss them so much that if I were rich, I might actually seriously pursue the whim of getting into the air bed business to try to figure out how to make the best, most truly durable air beds humankind has ever known.

TRULY durable - not "durable" in marketer language, which probably too often translates to "pathetically fragile" in good, honest English.

But, since I'm not rich, I'm probably just going to publicly daydream about my ideal air bed, and share this possibly good idea I thought of today.

Totally ignoring the issues of cost and profitability, I tried to brainstorm whatever I, as a layperson (with sometimes a lot of interest in scientific topics) could think of that might possibly work.

Other than rubber (an idea I'm not sure I like, since rubber has a smell, and rubber tires wear out eventually), spider silk was one of the first specific ideas to pop into my mind.

I think I heard or read in the news many years ago that spider silk is reputed to somehow be as strong as steel.

So, might it work for an air bed?

This article makes me think the answer might be yes:

If specially-prepared spider silk is good enough for parachutes, maybe it would be good enough to prevent an airbed from so easily acquiring holes, tears, or a distorted stretched shape?

Here's another interesting page:

I really wish I were rich, because if I were, nothing would be stopping me from dropping everything and trying to figure out if a spider silk air bed (or any other probably untried possibly plausible material for an air bed) is a truly feasible, good idea or not.

But, since I'm not rich, and there are many other things besides air bed creation that I need to get done, I'm just writing this blog post.

And hoping someone rich (or exceptionally motivated) will create such an air bed, and maybe send me a free one, or better yet, a reward of lots of money for giving them such a (hopefully) wonderful idea that might make them rich(er).

A gal can dream...

...and keep pointing out her donations and microdonations page. :-)

Blog - Forum