Nanotube Strength, Bad News for Space Elevators [2019]

Nanotube Strength, Bad News for Space Elevators [2019]

In a recent article from Nature, scientists finally were able to test the strength of nanotubes which is amazing news from the depths of the nanotechnology realm nevertheless, it looks like space elevators will remain in the land of science fiction a bit longer, but not everything is bad news.

Well it turns out that there are three configurations that you can make nanotubes in and that is what they tested, all of the three configurations yields completely different strength values, which is ok, but the problem is that in some cases the strength is well below the 63 GPa while other times it barely passes that. However, it never even gets close to the predicted values of 100 – 200 GPa.

Sources

Strength of carbon nanotubes depends on their chemical structures

Low-temperature Synthesis of high-purity single-walled carbon nanotubes form alcohol

Fullerene Nanotubes: C 1,000,000and Beyond: Some unusual new molecules —long, hollow fibers with tantalizing electronic and mechanical properties—have joined diamonds and graphite in the carbon family

[ATMOSK]

Space elevators are more realistic for smaller planetoids and moons where you dont need as much cable strength

[DoubleOSpanky]

Who would've thought that after all of those years of studying for school, I merely needed to adopt an armchair configuration to achieve the highest GPA...

/s

[basilwilford]

"This is totally going to revolutionize our current process." Several years later, "Yeah..., thats not gonna work anymore because so and so."

[FIGHTTHECABLE]

4:17 I very strongly disagree on the time arguement. To launch a rocket it takes weeks to prepare and build. Rockets can also fail. An elevator is there. Put it in, push the button.
Time is not relevant when you can save just a tiny bit of money. I will refer to the Concord Aircraft in this matter.

[abdullahtaibani]

Atleast they can replace copper windings in electric motors and make it more compact lite and powerful if not in the elevators yet.

[davidsirmons]

Zero-defect tubes will only be made with carbon direct-deposition, not chemical-to-carbon translation via burning. We're getting there.

[alvaro.sacris]

Wtf mate. Your channel is much more worth it. This editions, are AWESOME. I love them, and you explain all with clarity and order. It's profesional, keep it up mate. I cant figure out why youre having such a low number of visits.

[jibrish]

I love how HL3 was announced the day after this was uploaded

[EmmanuelMess]

"IGNORING SCIENCE everything's possible"

[jof]

36000km elevator : irrealistic
continental bridges, heavy elevators in mines or skyscrapers : still possible

[seeranos]

I wonder if chiral nanotubes with regularized defects could create super elastics without the use of rubber. 🤔

[jayhicks]

Although the monolog was for the most part well understandable, I would like to suggest that the speaker pay attention to the pronunciation of the word "attributed". When I played the model pronunciations from dict.cc, all but the one from an Indian lady were as I would expect and consistent with the pronunciations given in print dictionaries of British and American English. The bit difficulty is how the word is used, as verb or noun. The verb has the emphasis on the second <trib> syllable, whereas the noun is emphasized on the first syllable.

[listerdave]

Seems to me like we're still at a very primitive level in terms of building nanotubes, trying to squeeze out order from highly random chemical bulk processes. Seems to me the only way we will ever get perfect nanotubes of any significant length will be by assembling them with nano machines which would act in some way similar to how ribosomes assemble proteins.
We will of course first need to build the nano machines and that might even be done through the route of bio-engineering by modifying existing biological machinery rather than starting from scratch.


With all that however there is still the problem of defects forming after manufacture so there will always have to be an allowance made for defects no matter how perfect it was originally. Such defects will inevitably be caused by ionizing radiation from the carbon 14 present as part of the nanotube material as well as more significantly external radiation, which in space is no trivial amount.

[spaceman]

So imperfect carbon nanotube
Can’t make space elevators

Guess we need to wait for nanobots/nanomachine

Or composite carbon nanotube of some kind

[EwingTaiwan]

2:48 I'm very very annoyed seeing earth spinning

[rivaledrandom]

You make amazing high quality and very informative videos. You should be up there with the large educational channels

[peterbonnema]

This parameter tuning smells like a job for an evolutionary algorithm or other machine learning technique.

[tjpprojects]

Eh, I'll stick to my orbital rings and atlas towers.

[atimholt]

2:40 : One of my pet peeves is depictions of the Earth rotating the wrong way. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t happening in science videos.

[MuscarV]

"sits in his room in the 70's"...sits typing at a computer, what?