Nanotube sheets come of age

nature.com ^ | 18 August 2005 | Mark Peplow

[Prophet in the wilderness]

NANO HATS

[benjaminjjones]

Scotty was a war hero and a role model (I'm a science/engineering type).

I think he was still making babies at age eighty. Gave geeks like me hope, LOL.

(ever notice his missing finger, lost in WWII?)

[Route66]

Nano Nano Hats? :-)

[Lokibob]

If it can heat a car window, I don't see why not.

DAMN, long johns for year round use.

Anybody remember the "UNION SUIT" with the drop bottom?

[LloydofDSS]

This material is so thin and light weight it inspires ideas. If it could be made opaque to infrared light, we could launch it into space and then open up a huge sheet of it between the earth and the sun. Then we could regulate the temperature of the earth. End of global warming.

[benjaminjjones]

Sorry, all I could find was a "Live Long and Prosper"

[Prophet in the wilderness]

It's ok,,, as long as we have a picture of Spock,, need to put in his famous line......

Hhhmmmmmmmmmm ? Fascinating

[GEC]

Can the process generate a ribbon that is wide enough, fast enough to put up the space elevator?

If so, they should think about scrapping the next shuttle, and just put the heavy lift technology in place instead.

[tallhappy]

Great stuff.

Thanks for posting it.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

The Future is Now BUMP!

[staytrue]

stronger than steel sheets, yet a square kilometre of the material would weigh only 30 kilograms

Yes, this stuff could make the space elevator/ladder practical.

[John Will]

We need a power source for that. aka Power Armor.

[staytrue]

You put a large weight in roughly geosync orbit and run a very strong and lightweight cable back to earth. You hoist stuff up the cable like an elevator. If the cable is not strong, it breaks. If the cable is too heavy, it drags the geosync weight down.

[staytrue]

space elevator article

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_elevator_020327-1.html

[Prophet in the wilderness]

I have to think more on that, for my other questions, but, wouldn't that heavy weight out in space be, well ? weightless ?

[MississippiMan]

This is INCREDIBLY exciting news!

MM

[staytrue]

I should have said "large Mass" instead of large weight.

[Nipplemancer]

you're confusing weight with mass.
as much as i love the idea of the space elevator, i wouldn't expect anyone to build one for another hundred years, even if the nanotube technology is available now. It's rather expensive, sort of dangerous (imagine a long rope falling from the sky encircling the globe and leaving a wake of destruction around it's circumference. i read too much sci-fi i guess), and also complicated. On the plus side it would make getting into and out of orbit easy as pie.

[rmh47]

but, wouldn't that heavy weight out in space be, well ? weightless ?

If you put the mass at the orbital end beyond geosynchronus distance, but orbit it at geosynchronus speed, i.e., one orbit per day, it would want to pull away from the earth, keeping tension on the cable. The "elevator" would have to be directly over the equator, so as to avoid any north-south movement as seen from earth.

[Qout]

Stronger than steel, light weight, transparent, hmm... Now Wonder Woman can build her invisible jet.
The new stealth technology.