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New Technique for Creating Nanotube Sheets
Quetzalcoatl writes "A team of researchers has come up with a way to make strong, stable sheets of multiwall nanotubes at a rate of seven meters per minute. These sheets already display a number of remarkable qualities that lend them to many different applications, including artificial muscles, transparent antennas, video displays and solar cells."
Dupe.
I'm afraid they won't.
To quote the original article: (Emphasis mine)
stable sheets of multiwall nanotubes at a rate of seven meters per minute.
To quote your link:
The multiwalled nanotubes did not burn at all.
They will not explode.
With one of these babys it would only take 26245.00978 years to have at least part of your 60,000mi. space elevator! Consider it a long-term investment? Where do I signup!?
46 hours and 34 minutes, surely this has got to be getting close to a duping record
The problem with the foam is that Nasa loves to leave the shuttle outside for days with an unstable foam (suspectable from sun hardening/creating cracks, soaking up moisture from the atmosphere which then freezes, widening the cracks). The temperature difference between outside and inside of the foam can reach about 100Kelvin. If they would shield it from the sun, do not drive it out to early and keep it nicely aircoed and conditioned, the foam will probably stay better. If really good aircoed, or with more accurate launch windows, the foam might not bee needed at all.
Adding a protective net around the just described properties of the foam, will makes you run the risk that the foam will really behave bad. The foam could instead of fail in pieces fail as a whole, causing this ultra strong net to fly around in un unpredictable way.
Adding the net not around the foam but instead around the shuttle will take care that shuttle arrives in one piece in space. The material however is not heat proof. It will fail under high temperature, actually the outside of the space shuttle is a "controlled" failure, in which after several flights certain parts are replaced. If your net fails on the way back, the shuttle can still loose the vital tiles and not land in one part.
Your idea is not a bad one, and does not need a superhightech foam perse. Just a flexible PE layer could do the trick. The tank will never gets really hot (it is dumped before that happens, and then burns itself on the way down, nobody cares about that part of the trip). Maybe adding a second wiring in the foam itself with some fiber will help too, it will be more complex though.
Last but not least: this problem is a problem invented by Nasa. The foam would not or be less necessary if Nasa used a different fuel (kerosine like the Russians), or would keep the shuttle in a lower surrounding temperature condition.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
I actually got an answer to this. According to CmdrTaco, they almost always know it's a dupe, but they rerun the story if they get I high rate of submissions. The theory is that if readers are still submitting the story in large batches, then they didn't see it the first time.
Of course, this might just be one they missed...
You guys just love jumping to conclusions, don't ya? I bet even after I post this, there will still be comments about "duping" to follow. You see, off the bat ya gotta realize that this article says multiwalled nanotubes -- usually it's just "carbon nanotube sheets", giving the idea it's two-sided like a sheet of aluminum foil. Moreover, it doesn't say they created the strongest nanotubes, but rather a new and faster way of developing them.
You're right, there the same, kelvin just measures from abs zero as opposed to the freezing point of water. They're both based on the gradient of water from freezing to boiling at 1 bar.