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]

I would be the last person to assert there aren't still problems and engineering challenges yet to solve. Nevertheless, I've seen a design that appears workable and has taken at least all the environmental concerns into account, and buckytape would be an ideal material to build it with provided the tensile strength is in fact high enough. (I will note, though, that at fifty nanometers thick, it'd need a hell of a lot of laminations.)