Comments on: Superstrong nanotube sheets made, targeted at solar sails

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 16:26:06 +0000

How thick would the material have to be to stop a high powered .308 round?

By: mark

mark — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 06:07:53 +0000

The difference is … they’re making it. Sheets of pure CNT 5cm across, 50 nanometers thick, supporting structures thousands of times its own weight … http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8976160/

By: Nanoman

Nanoman — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 01:40:06 +0000

This is very amazing but my question is this: The articles claim the nanotube sheets are stronger than steel. Does this mean we can grow these sheets not only for solar cells, but, also as new structural materials to replace structural steel? What would the limits of using this PARTICULAR METHOD to make nanotube structural materials and walls, armor etc?

By: Richard Jones

Richard Jones — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 20:39:40 +0000

Robert, it’s no disrespect to Drexler’s Masters thesis to point out that there’s a substantial difference between suggesting something theoretically and finding out a way to implement it in practise. If you can do it in a lab, it’s new, no matter how long ago it was that someone said you can do it in principle. My copy of Nanosystems isn’t to hand, but doesn’t it say in the dedication something like “To the experimentalists – they do all the hard work”?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 15:37:20 +0000

Is not the newness that this group is more successfully implementing and engineering the theories that Drexler had about solar sails than other groups. Being able to spin the sheets of trillions of pure carbon nanotubes of nearly any length and being able to easily work with them seems to be a good way to bring the properties of single carbon nanotubes to wide applications. Thus this seems important for all of the commercial applications in artificial muscles, protective clothing, thermal heat pipes, sensors, electron field emitters, ultra-high intensity lamps, displays, structural composites, supercapacitors, batteries, fuel cells and electronic textiles.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 18:01:10 +0000

But here is my question regarding this nanotube sheet-making ability. Instead of solar cells, can the stuff be used to produce STRUCTURAL sheets of nanotube material that is stronger than steel? The articles claim that the stuff is stronger than steel for the same weight, so, if they thicken it up a bit, say they make a quarter inch thick sheet of it, will that be able to be formed into I Beams and car body shells and armor and so on and so forth, and be ultra tough and strong?

By: John Novak

John Novak — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 06:25:33 +0000

Robert?

When you can show me one reference, anywhere, to Drexler producing materials like this– not describing the materials, not describing how they might be produced, but actually producing materials like this, in macro quantities, no less– then I will concede that this is neither new nor newsworthy.

The significance here is that these materials are now being produced nearly as quickly as commercially spun wool. Do not turn your nose up at the leap from abstract theory to a commercially viable, macro-scalable process. If it were trivial, it would have been donetwenty years ago.

By: Thomas Miller

Thomas Miller — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 22:29:10 +0000

There is also an article on MSNBC reporting the same.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 20:40:33 +0000

Also see: Nature MSNBC

By: Robert Bradbury

Robert Bradbury — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 14:00:11 +0000

As I have pointed out elsewhere these facts were explored in Drexler’s Masters Thesis at MIT some 20+ years ago. There isn’t much that appears to be new here.