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Bullet-Proof Sheets of Carbon Nanotubes
An anonymous reader notes a CNN.com report on Nanocomp Technologies, the first in the world to make sheets of carbon nanotubes. "In April, [CEO] Lashmore had a mechanical multicaliber gun shoot bullets at different versions of his sheet, each less than a fifth of an inch thick. ... Army tests show the material works as well as Kevlar. The military also hopes to replace copper wiring in planes and satellites with highly conductive nanotubes, saving millions of dollars in fuel costs."
In the 1980s I worked in advanced ceramic materials development for Corning. We were pitching insulating sleeves to be cast into cylinder heads. At a meeting with the Ford SVO engineering group, one of their engineers said "The first thing you hear about a new material is always the best thing you will hear about it. After that, the 'yeah, buts' begin." Yeah, but is it safe? Yeah, but is it affordable? Yeah, but will it conduct / dissipate heat? Yeah, but is it environmentally friendly? It takes time for systems to be redesigned around the special attributes of revolutionary materials.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
If they could make it work it sounds like it would be a great material for a bullet resistant vest.
Although getting hit with a taser while wearing one ...
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
And to be fair, in some cases the new materials have taken over. Most passenger jet designs are switching to carbon fiber bodies; the cost is high, but the lighter material means that the you need far less fuel on every trip, eventually paying for itself. (Yes, the 787 is having problems in production, but I suspect that's more a matter of poor coordination than any intrinsic weakness in the material.) And the GP ignored plastics, which relatively recently displaced all sorts of time tested materials in the construction of all manner of products. Who's to say that we won't find a way to produce carbon nanotubes cheaply in the next few years?
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