Here is what I have found with aerogel. I did a little research when I posted my sleeping bag post in make yer own gear.

First of all, aerogel is very stiff. The granules are probably very light, but no compression. There is a company that Dryer mentioned, Aspen Aerogels, that have been able to make it into a blanket. There website shows some products they have been working on. One is a sleeping bag. They also make shoe inserts and Burton puts the stuff in their jackets. It is pretty interesting stuff, but with some faults. One fault with the blanket stuff is that it can't be compressed (that might not be a fault, depending on how you look at it), and it is pretty dense (heavy) for the thickness. Here is an example, if I wanted a top quilt with an aergel blanket as the insulation, and I picked the 2mm thick stuff, and I contoured it like a mummy, the insulation would weigh 1.7 lbs with a Clo of 0.9. You can look at their website and do the numbers yourself, but it seems to me that by changing this brittle material into something pliable, adds to the density.

Here is my email response from Aspen Aerogel

Hi David,
I apologize for the excessive delay in responding to your request. Your email landed in my spam filter and I just finally had a chance to clean it out.
Pyrogel2250 is priced at $2.86/SF for less than 4000SF purchases. The product is a nominal 57” wide so a running yard would be about $40.76/linear yard.
The Clo rating is approximately 11.5/inch.
Our standard sample sizes are 8 ½” x 11” but I can also provide a larger custom cut size with a lead time of about 2-3 weeks.
Let me know what you would like.



In the end, I thing aergel a bad idea for insulation in a sleeping bag, and inflating mattress pad. 800+ down is probably cheaper.