[7] In 2014, a group of students from the University of Leicester released a study describing functioning of spaceship plasma deflector shields.
[8] In 2015, Boeing was granted a patent on a force field system designed to protect against shock waves generated by explosions.
The third layer is an invisible but stable sheet of material like carbon nanotubes, or graphene that is only one atom thick, and thus transparent, but stronger than steel to block possible debris from destroyed objects.
[citation needed] The plasma window emits a bright glow, with the color being dependent on the gas used.
In some cases it is used as an external "door" to hangars on spacecraft, to prevent the ship's internal atmosphere from venting into outer space.
The StarTram proposal plans on use of a power-demanding MHD window over a multi-meter diameter launch tube periodically, but briefly at a time, to prevent excessive loss of vacuum during the moments when a mechanical shutter temporarily opens in advance of a hypervelocity spacecraft.