Watch and listen to NASA cracking 8-foot barrels to test new space materials

When it comes to finding the best new materials for building rockets, NASA has an old-fashioned approach: apply pressure and see what breaks first. In the video above, you can see the space agency testing 8.4-foot-tall barrels made of (are you ready?) graphite-epoxy honeycomb-core sandwich composites. The barrels were rigged with a network of 300 electronic strain sensors and 16,000 fiber optics sensors to measure their structural integrity during the process, and even the polka dots are part of the test — they make it easier to measure movement and deformation using high-speed cameras.

The barrels in the video are being squeezed with loads of 900,000 pounds

The material being tested in the video could one day be used for building...