So, about that golden egg?

[unixronin]

Unless I'm badly mistaken, yesterday's announcement of a process for continuously extruding carbon-nanotube ribbon means we how have every essential technology and material that we need to build a beanstalk.  That's right, not the goose-and-giant type, the space-elevator type.  The process, developed by the University of Texas at Dallas, can extrude continuous "buckytape" up to 5cm wide at speeds up to 10 meters per minute.  Stronger than steel, weight-for-weight, but weighing only 30kg per square kilometer, it'd also make a hell of a material for a lightsail.

Arthur C. Clarke bet it would become possible soon.  Looks like it might happen even sooner than he expected.

(Article from jw1776 via technoshaman)

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Considering it's a brand new process, I'd be surprised if it was 100& ready for production yet. And they don't specify what the tensile strength is, except for "stronger than steel" -- they don't say how much. Still, at least now they have a way to fab the stuff in quantity; presumably as they learn to do it with longer nanotubes, the tensile strength will go up.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

er .... 100%