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Buckypaper — Out of the Lab, Into the Market
doomsdaywire writes "Buckypaper isn't exactly news to anyone here. However, this article quotes Ben Wang, director of Florida State's High-Performance Materials Institute, saying, 'Our plan is perhaps in the next 12 months we'll begin maybe to have some commercial products.' The article continues: '"If this thing goes into production, this very well could be a very, very game-changing or revolutionary technology to the aerospace business," said Les Kramer, chief technologist for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, which is helping fund the Florida State research. ... The long-range goal is to build planes, automobiles and other things with buckypaper composites. The military also is looking at it for use in armor plating and stealth technology.'"
If you want, you can get nanotubes (in multiple forms, including buckypaper) from Unidym. This is the company which was founded by Richard Smalley. They've spent the last decade basically buying up patents and companies working with carbon nanotubes (in addition to doing their own research). If the Florida State guys have anything which isn't already covered by a Unidym patent, they'll just get bought up, or brought in, or something like that. Unidym seems to like collecting academic research partners.
Or not.
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
In the larger view, did we ever? Two things have spurred most advances in human history... War and sex. Of the two, war has been the dominant force for the large bulk of it. Even vaccines have war uses. If your army is immune to some biological agent and your enemy's is not, you can then use that agent as a weapon (unless you're playing by some arbitrary set of rules such as the Geneva Conventions - Note: I make no claim as to whether the GCs are positive or negative, but they are pretty arbitrary.). Even vaccines for chronic diseases such as polio help one's army by increasing the numbers of able-bodied workers and soldiers and decreasing the numbers of those who need support.
So what if it is developed for military purposes? It will trickle to the private sector soon enough, just as GPS, the Internet, and carbon-fiber composites have.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
Terrible, isn't it? People doing things without permission! Unregulated activity! We must bring this irresponsible "scientific research" under government control! After all, we know that government can be trusted to never do anything irresponsible such as, oh, I don't know, maybe spraying crowds of people with poison gas or setting off nuclear explosives in the atmosphere? And no government would ever enslave large numbers of young men and send them off to try to kill young men similarly enslaved by another government. No. Let's have government control everything. We know we can trust them, after all. Just look at history.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So we should all just squat in the mud until the sun goes out, living in grass huts and eating windfalls (but only in the manner of our grandfathers: Don't you dare do anything new.)
If you believe that carbon nanotubes are dangerous get some (they are available for sale) and demonstrate their hazardous nature in controlled experiments. BTW buckyballs and carbon nanotubes occur naturally in soot. You might want to look into outlawing fire.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This could turn into another DDT
If by "another DDT", you mean, "another intergovernmental ban on a harmless product with great potential due to pressure from environmental hysteria, then I agree with you.