Next Big Future: Creating strong macroscale Carbon nanotube materialLooks like we might have a space elevator cable fundamental material on our hands...They calculated the toughness (the work needed to break the fiber) of a CNT fiber as 975 J g-1. much higher than carbon fibers(12 J g–1), Kevlar fibers (33 J g–1), and CNT fibers reported previously (14–20 J g–1).
Almost 300 times the strength of Kevlar? That's pretty darn good! The minium usable length on something like that, though, would be what, a couple of hundred yards? So 4 cm pieces would be too short... but if they can make 4 cm bits, 4 meters won't be far behind, and then 40 - then 400. What the heck - 4 km strands would almost make the job easy...
J.
Comments (2)
Jerry:
Remember that a space elevator is a build down structure.
You start in orbit and build your support structure out and down from there. By the time the cable gets to the Earth's surface it's almost complete.
Zero G manufacturing would make long carbon chains with a perfect crystal lattice structure a lot easier to fabricate.
otpu
Posted by otpu | July 7, 2008 6:00 PM
Posted on July 7, 2008 18:00
I'll bet you a quarter the environmentalists, if this ever gets going, will get so worked up over polluting the pristine near-Earth vacuum that they'll block any zero-G manufacturing...
J.
Posted by JLawson | July 8, 2008 11:00 PM
Posted on July 8, 2008 23:00