I asked Dr Rabiei that very question by email yesterday, and she is working on it:
"Let me start by saying that it is not a crazy idea and is actually what I have been working on recently. I even have a proposal in DARPA on testing the performance of the material at supersonic speeds. At this time, our data covers up to a speed close to 1Km/s as you mentioned. We have not tested the performance at higher speed and that is what I was hoping to conduct soon."
(I asked if it could be used for space debris at 8-15km/s, and apologized for asking a crazy question)
That would be outstanding if it could ... talk about the perfect material for shielding supercritical spacecraft components. Radiation resistance, projectile resistance, lighter than normal metal, temperature resistant... What's not to like?
I was thinking of a small amount to protect supercritical components; navigation computers, comms, life support (if applicable); not necessarily the entire spacecraft.
This presumably depends mostly on what your delta-V is. You can be wearing Epic Foam Platemail of the Whale +5 but if your orbital velocity is 7 km/s and you hit a 100g rock at the same velocity but going the other direction physics says you're about to have a very bad day.
I believe GP was referring to delta as in mathematics, which refers to difference and not necessarily change. So the delta between +7km/s and -7km/s is 14km/s.
You are technically correct, though based on common usage patio11 got their point across.
That would be a winning application. Something that I expect you could get NASA/SpaceX on board with, send some sheets up as ride along payloads for a resupply mission, put them in the bay behind the Dragon module on the second stage with some cameras, then use dragon as an uplink to look for space debris impact on the second stage as it re-enters and monitor the results. I would have to know more about what is available in the remains of the second stage to know how much mass you would end up adding for the experiment but I expect it would be less than a couple of kilograms.
The current designs already use dual hull - the first makes the projectile explode to dust, the second stops the debris. The critical problem is weight. That construction that is shown looks to be quite heavy relatively.
"Let me start by saying that it is not a crazy idea and is actually what I have been working on recently. I even have a proposal in DARPA on testing the performance of the material at supersonic speeds. At this time, our data covers up to a speed close to 1Km/s as you mentioned. We have not tested the performance at higher speed and that is what I was hoping to conduct soon."
(I asked if it could be used for space debris at 8-15km/s, and apologized for asking a crazy question)