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Nanotube Muscles Are Strong As Steel, Light As Air
Al writes "Scientists from the University of Texas at Dallas have created nanotube-based artificial muscles that are light as air and work even under extreme temperatures. The 'muscles' expand width-wise by about 200 percent when a voltage is applied, but are stronger than steel lengthwise. The nanotubes within the fiber naturally stick together. Applying a voltage makes them obtain a charge and repel one another. The researchers created them by stretching bundles of entangled carbon nanotubes into long threads. Several cool videos show the strange stuff in action. Some experts, including one from NASA, believe that the nanotube muscles' ability to withstand extreme heat and cold could make them suitable shape-shifting materials for future space missions."
What wasn't apparent to me is whether these "muscles" are exerting force along the axis of their attachment points; are they pulling against the "bones" to which they're attached as they expand laterally, perpendicular to the axis of attachment?
If they're not, I don't see how these structures can be described as muscles.
Good point, but I am sure that they can shrink those energy requirements... Didn't computers use to be the size of a room and take up a hell of a lot of energy....
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
You are comparing space and war? Space technology helps humans. In some cases it may only pay off in the far future, or only pays in knowledge of the universe (if you don't think that's a worthy goal, go back to Westboro), but there is plenty of space tech that's fundamental to the modern life. Satellites of all kinds, without them forget about communications, weather satellites, geologic survey satellites, etc.
why can't these scientists just devote their work to curing the common cold or the flu?
How will our immune system end up looking without a frequent visitor to give it a work out?
Pure tungsten is about eight times as strong as mild steel -- the stuff that your car, refrigerator, and computer case are made of -- in terms of tensile strength. It's also very tolerant of high temperatures.
But because of its brittleness, it's useless as a structural material. Why do these articles always refer to strength, without describing what kind of strength that is? Tensile, compression, shear, torsional, etc.
More reasonable guess: space junk hits net and continues along its previous trajectory, but now with a virtually massless net trailing from it.
...Or given the speed most "space junk" travels, it'll just:
- make a nice hole in the net
- explode into even more, smaller, and harder to track objects
- and keep going
"Stronger than steel" doesnt mean anything at 16000mph