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Diamond Nanothreads Could Support Space Elevator (space.com)
Taco Cowboy writes with news that Penn State researchers have discovered a way to produce ultra-thin diamond nanothreads that could be ideal for a space elevator. According to the report at Space.com, The team, led by chemistry professor John Badding, applied alternating cycles of pressure to isolated, liquid-state benzene molecules and were amazed to find that rings of carbon atoms assembled into neat and orderly chains. While they were expecting the benzene molecules to react in a disorganized way, they instead created a neat thread 20,000 times smaller than a strand of human hair but perhaps the strongest material ever made. ... Just recently, a team from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia modeled the diamond nanothreads using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations and concluded that the material is far more versatile than previously thought and has great promise for aerospace properties.
time to re-read Red Mars
Will it last forever?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
You have to research super tensile solids first
So all we need to do now is launch a gigabillion tons of diamond nanothread cable into high orbit, anchor it to an asteroid or comet we diverted to a stable Earth orbit earlier and start lowering the cable. Or if we mined the anchor and produced the cable in-orbit, this would be just like Red Mars, yay!
I've heard someone claim that the energy requirements (and transmission loss) to lift something up a space elevator did not compare favorably to rockets. Still, many seem to have high hopes for the concept. How exactly does a space elevator "save" energy for lifting loads to orbit?
In The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur. C. Clarke wrote about the use of a diamond filament for building the space elevator. The main character, Dr. Morgan, carried around with him a retractable rope made of this filament. He uses it at one point to climb down a cliff face, and it's so thin it can be barely seen...
Kudos, Arthur...
It sounds wonderful, but I have two questions before I book a ride...
How many cubic kilometres of material are needed to build the space elevator?
Will it turn into a pile of dust if it's hit by lightning?
USB, USB, USB!
They are not even close to sufficient in weight bearing capacity for an earth space elevator. Nothing we have is within 3 orders of magnitude of being sufficient. Not even in the smallest testable quantities. Now, we can build a space elevator on the moon. But not from earth.
looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!
in the air!
in the air!
Even a some random, drunk, asshole can see that shit.
Such as yourself, for example. Some of your words are un-intelligible, perhaps you should remove your head from your asshole.
Super strong, super thin threads? Wasn't there a scene in Neuromancer where one of those, extended from a diamond spool worn as a thumb, constituted a deadly weapon?
At some point in time also a spider silk was the strongest material - stronger than steel. But I have yet to see a crane that uses spider silk to lift containers.
Wake me up when we can create a 1km long and 1cm thick rope from these diamond nanothreads.
I want a full suit of diamond nano-chain-mail.
Original PSU article: http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2014-news/Badding9-2014 :o
"Theory by our co-author Vin Crespi suggests that this is potentially the strongest, stiffest material possible, while also being light in weight"
It's definitely too soon to rejoice.
Also, "diamond thread" looks nice, compared to e.g. "benzene thread" right?
long and thing threads cause cancer when inhaled even if they are chemically other vice OK. search 'asbestos cancer mechanism' or smth
The dude who created Molecule Chain was named Sinclair!
You could make a cool garrote with one of those threads. Totally invisible
Come back when you've made 2 metres....
Stuart http://stuarthalliday.com/
I would hope that NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, JAXA, CNSA, and ISRO have worked up a plan for how to build it once a suitable material has been found.
I do like the idea of placing a large asteroid into geosynchronous orbit, and then have a smaller one descend. Gravity will ensure that it is being pulled tight and goes straight down. I also think that putting the space station at the end of it's life up there would help crews setup everything.
If you're packing a carbon nanotube, the only way you're getting a vertical ride is with diamonds. "She'll pretty much have to"
The summary links to a lousy article that says essentially nothing about the actual research. Here is an account that describes the material under study.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I think that a space elevator is entirely impractical for a planet with an atmosphere (and air traffic); aside from the material science challenges, there is just too high a risk of one errant aircraft or piece of orbital junk taking the whole thing down.
The Lofstrom loop cited by the parent poster is interesting, but seems to suffer from some of the same material science and fragility issues. Its energy consumption when idle is also an enormous cost factor (the power required to overcome atmospheric drag would be staggering all by itself). From a practical standpoint, I cannot imagine any organization building either one of these on Earth; the costs and risk are too formidable.
For practical space launches, the best alternative would appear to be a hybrid air/space approach similar to Scaled Composites' SpaceShip One (also used by Orbital Sciences' Pegasus satellite launch system). Your first stage is essentially a cargo aircraft, which gets your space vehicle up past the first 10 KM of altitude and the first 600 KPH of velocity without the massive inefficiency of a first-stage rocket booster. The winged second stage is either a pure rocket vehicle or a hybrid air-breathing / rocket vehicle. This system uses atmospheric lift and rocket power where each is most effective; the big airfoils and air-breathing jet turbines stay in-atmosphere for immediate reuse (this is much more cost-effective in the long term than a reusable first-stage rocket booster, as it can be reused literally thousands of times between major overhauls).
IMO, this is what the future of space launch will look like.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
You do realize there are a lot of very serious engineering concerns, even if we find a magic material to make the Tether out of, right?
There's 'a lot of very serious engineering concerns' when building bridges and skyscrapers, too. What's your point?
Nobody is looking for a 'magic material', any more than *steel* was a 'magic material' when it came to building bridges across the Mississippi. We already know the properties needed, and even have some viable candidates where we need to figure out how to mass produce long fibers.
Of course. You do realize that our history is replete with solving very serious engineering concerns, do you not? You do realize that when a huge economic benefit beckons, last one there is the one with the empty pockets? You do realize that engineers love challenges, right? Right?
Yes, it's all about the material. That's the key to it. Period. If, as TFS suggests, this material is "the one", then the rest will inevitably follow.
Can someone explain this to me?
It cannot be a simple elevator, because if you place vertical force outside of the spacecraft or make it affect the elevator (ex. by friction) you will be pulling the orbital elevator part down. Eventually collapsing the structure.
So maybe it is meant to be just a track for the spacecraft? So that the craft uses its own engine, but the elevator stabilizes the flight? Again, no. Because every destabilization creates a horizontal force that hits the track. And at this distance we can assume the material will act like a line - it will bend and then compensate this by... pulling the orbital part down. Same result.
So how does this magical thing is supposed to work?
(Apart from sucking tax money in and producing bribes.)
About 0.1%. To push a ton into high orbit, you need 1000 tons of fuel.
A space elevator can be energy neutral, or even a positive generator, all you need for the latter is more mass coming in than going out.
Elevators going only one way would run out of platforms very quickly...
For every material I've seen touted. "This could be used to create a space elevator!"
How about fairy tears? Can those be used to create a space elevator? How about crocodile booties? No? Yes?
Would diamond/carbon nanofibers be sufficient for a mars or lunar space elevator?
Oh look, some ludicrous sci-fi delusion. What's the matter, your box set of Star Trek: the Next Generation is useless as a guide to real engineering?
protip: stop reading so much sci-fi. Look out the window and notice how little the world has physically changed.
It's all about information. We are talking via internet, you didn't beam yourself here physically.
Understand? There are no magical materials. It's the Periodic Table of the Elements. That's all there is.
"That's the key to it. Period."
Appropriately, the Periodic Table of the Elements isn't just a good idea, it's the law.
The difference being that a tether snapping and raining superstrong microscopic diamond fibers 100's of km long in a path across the equator is several orders of magnitude more destructive than a bridge collapsing.
The military applications are endless.
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Harlequin's_Kiss
Yes, that's why we don't have steel, because it "isn't in the periodic table"; that's why we've discovered all manner of interesting properties in materials that aren't "in the periodic table" but are derived from combinations of the elements, various crystalline and other molecular arrangements of those structures, both those found in nature and those that have arrived courtesy of, you know, science.
The science takeaway -- as opposed to your "man can never fly" mode of reasoning -- is that this is a materials issue, and not one that carries any impossibilities, either.
Here are some quotes for you to contemplate:
"As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, you just can't do it."
-- Rear Admiral Clark Woodward, 1939
"The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformations of these atoms is talking moonshine."
-- Ernest Rutherford, 1930
"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will be obtainable."
-- Albert Einstein, 1932
"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys which distract our attention from serious things. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"I must confess that my imagination, in spite even of spurring, refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and foundering at sea."
-- H. G. Wells, 1901
"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice the speed of stagecoaches?"
-- Quarterly Review, 1825
"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia." ...you are a proud member of a very famous group of fools. :)
-- Dr. Dionysus Lardner, 1793-1859
The fact that A, B and C which were previously considered to be impossible eventually were made possible does not mean that D which is currently considered impossible will eventually be made possible.
The obvious example is FTL travel/time travel.
Also, the "it's just an engineering problem" misses the point that you can't separate engineering from economics and politics. We know that we could all be flying in supersonic passenger planes now, because we built Concorde. But there are no supersonic passenger planes in service. It was never just about engineering a supersonic passenger plane.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Wells had more than a failure of imagination, he had a failure of knowledge. In 1776, a submarine was used in the American Revolutionary War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submersible)
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I've done real work on solving the FTL problem - about 50/50 solvable. - Solvability ultimately depends on the ability to capture or create then contain negative mass matter. The biggest brake on the whole thing is that general relativity the dominant theory in the field for the last 100 years is complete nonsense above the speed of light. - You can have two of the three - general relativity, black holes, conservation of momentum..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
... yet conceptualized? Or how it could be built - given that materials become viable and available?
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Let's see. First quote: that's from well after US tests bombing and sinking several obsolete warships, including ex-German battleship Ostfriesland, and at least a decade and a half after most admirals considered carriers of importance only second to battleships (and many not with the qualification), You picked an idiot saying something stupid, that most admirals of the time would disagree with.
Einstein's comment may have been dead on in 1932, for all I know. That changed fairly rapidly.
So, what you're saying is that you can cherry-pick really stupid quotations from history. (You missed Admiral Leahy, in roughly the same position as the chairman of the JCS today) insisting in 1945 that a nuclear bomb was impossible, and pointing out he was an explosives expert.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I don't see how general relativity could possibly give nonsensical answers to questions involving objects traveling over the speed of light, since (a) it isn't intended to work with FTL, and (b) nobody knows what FTL would be like if it were possible, so it's difficult to say that predictions would be nonsense.
You seem to assume that we can have matter of negative mass. The fact that we could do neat things with it doesn't mean it can possibly exist.
What does general relativity say about black holes and the conservation of momentum? Black holes have momentum, and it seems to me that some theoretician would have mentioned this in a peer-reviewed journal if it were true.
BTW, if you have special relativity and FTL, you've got time travel.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Seriously. This will be the first published use of the material.
Hi. The real problem with both general and special relativity is that they both rely on the idea of time as dimension, which is generally incompatible with most FTL models. In my version time does not behave as a dimension at FTL speeds, instead time is point like giving a 3 Dimensional space time - so time travel is impossible. (In the FTL model 4D space time still exists at quantum scales, but becomes non-coherent at the quantum limit.)
There is certainly no hard proof for this version of the FTL but equally there is absolutely zero hard proof for the standard 4D space time version.. There are several pieces of indirect evidence for my FTL model, plus the FTL model unifies (a very slightly modified) general relativity with quantum mechanics and with classical physics, plus the FTL model is also at least an order of magnitude simpler than the standard relativistic model. The big negative for the FTL model is that its maths is non-continuous, and ‘ugly’, and has to map a number of infinite quantities. (I made the first step into the FTL while working on the maths of Strong AI on infinite non-finite sets and self-complete systems..)
I have recently found a real experiment that just might be able to test the two models against each other. - The FTL model predicts that black holes should have a central massive singularity, while general relativity predicts that a black holes mass should be distributed.. This difference is theoretically detectable in the behaviour of objects in close orbit around black holes.
As for negative mass matter, obviously again there is no proof on whether it exists or not. However if my model is correct then negative mass matter is a pretty good candidate for dark matter. The basic predicted behaviour of negative mass matter is that it is tachyonic (FTL coherent) and so it shouldn't interact with ordinary matter - except through gravity. In this model tachyons can also travel slower than light because their internal geometry remains FTL coherent at all STL speeds..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
I wasn't attempting to be comprehensive. Just pointing out a very few of the many incorrect naysayers in history, for whatever reason(s), and indicating that the poster I was replying to had joined them, pontificating negative cluelessness about matters that have yet to be shown to comply with those assertions, and further, about matters that look quite doable to actual, you know, physicists.
Don't worry about it. If a space elevator is possible, it's going to happen, barring actual discovery of antigravity or some such equally unlikely technology. Our opinions will have no effect upon this whatsoever.