Guest essay by Eric Worrall
South China Morning Post has published a claim that Chinese researchers have successfully synthesised a sample of a carbon nanotube material so strong it could be used to construct the tether cable of a space elevator.
China has strongest fibre that can haul 160 elephants – and a space elevator?
Scientists say just 1 cubic centimetre of the carbon nanotube material won’t break under the weight of more than 800 tonnes
Tsinghua University researchers are trying to get the fibre into mass production for use in military or other areas
PUBLISHED : Friday, 26 October, 2018, 12:03am
Stephen ChenA research team from Tsinghua University in Beijing has developed a fibre they say is so strong it could even be used to build an elevator to space.
They say just 1 cubic centimetre of the fibre – made from carbon nanotube – would not break under the weight of 160 elephants, or more than 800 tonnes. And that tiny piece of cable would weigh just 1.6 grams.
“This is a breakthrough,” said Wang Changqing, a scientist at a key space elevator research centre at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian who was not involved in the Tsinghua study.
The Chinese team has developed a new “ultralong” fibre from carbon nanotube that they say is stronger than anything seen before, patenting the technology and publishing part of their research in the journal Nature Nanotechnology earlier this year.
“It is evident that the tensile strength of carbon nanotube bundles is at least 9 to 45 times that of other materials,” the team said in the paper.
They said the material would be “in great demand in many high-end fields such as sports equipment, ballistic armour, aeronautics, astronautics and even space elevators”.
…
Those cables would need to have tensile strength – to withstand stretching – of no less than 7 gigapascals, according to Nasa. In fact, the US space agency launched a global competition in 2005 to develop such a material, with a US$2 million prize attached. No one claimed the prize.
Now, the Tsinghua team, led by Wei Fei, a professor with the Department of Chemical Engineering, says their latest carbon nanotube fibre has tensile strength of 80 gigapascals.
…
If this claim is verified by other researchers, the properties of this new material are straight out of science fiction.
Space elevators are the ultimate cheap space launch technology. Instead of blasting into space using a rocket, space elevators allow launch vehicles to literally climb to orbit along a long cable, using electric power supplied via the cable.
The way space elevators work, a satellite is placed in a geosynchronous orbit, and a long cable is dangled down to Earth, where it is tethered to a ground station. Geosynchronous satellites orbit the Earth once every 24 hours, so from the point of view of someone on Earth they appear to permanently hang in the same place in the sky, providing the perfect orbital tether to the top of a very long elevator cable. TV satellites are also placed in geostationary orbits, so you can point your satellite dish at the transmitter, and never have to adjust it again.
The catch is the tether cable has to support its own weight for at least 22,000 miles, so the cable material must be immensely strong and extremely light. The new Chinese nanotube material may satisfy both of these requirements.
Space elevators could be used to construct solar power satellites for an affordable price.
The new material might even make electric cars practical – the Post claims it could potentially be used to construct a flywheel battery for an electric automobile capable of holding 10,000 miles worth of electric charge.
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What happens if lightning strikes the cable?
what cable?
A magic material that is so strong that one cubic centimeter (?) of it won’t break under the weight of 800 tons. Hey it would be great if it’s real. It would also be great if Santa Claus was real too. But I don’t think I’ll start believing in Santa Claus until I see a flying reindeer.
“LOOK! Up in the sky!”
“It’s just rain, dear.”
Look for China to start activities to take over Indonesia, as the will need land on the equator to build the base for this elevator
This elevator thing wouldn’t have to go all the way to the ground. The Yo-Yo would only need to go down to about the 75,000 feet above sea-level mark and let go from there. Things that need to go up could be lifted by balloon. But, I still can’t get the image of a catapult outa my head.
If this stuff can be made cheep enough, perhaps it’s the solution to grid level storage.
I’m guessing you’d have to push the “up” button more than 160 times for the thing to finally appear. Better build some stairs too.
All this talk of supporting elephants seems strangely appropriate. The weight of white elephants is practically infinite.
Isaac Arthur’s space elevator video is very interesting watching — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc8_AuzeYKE
In it he was theorizing that a carbon nanotube fiber would be strong enough.
Few of us were discussing the subject the other day, general opinion was that if possible certainly is not with current technology.
I’m still of the view that orbital forces on an object spanning all altitudes from 0 to geostationary will not allow realisation of such project.
Perhaps this stuff could make pressurized light water nuclear reactors cheaper and safer.
Space is a waste of money.
Signed liberal America
Who are, perhaps, a waste of space.
All of this will need energy, a lot of it. And with the Green blob, energy will be in short supply. Also I thought that the word “Carbon”was never to be uttered, Hi.
MJE.
Sorry to be rude. First sentence. It’s dogshit. People still like to make the theoretical claims for graphene and other super-materials, based on theoretical numbers of the defect-free material. It simply doesn’t happen. Entropy and the Second Law ensures that you will never get to make such materials, and that is before the practical world has it’s say.
Before global-warming actually gained traction in the real political world, I used to rant about the garbage spouted under the name of “nano-technology”. Those particular snake-oil salesmen haven’t entirely gone away but they just don’t get the media limelight like they used to before climate-change was the new guarantor of funding.
Graphene has indeed been overhyped, but some of its potential applications are being realized:
http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics-technology/graphene-biosensors-finally-a-commercial-reality/153805/
Thanks for the link. I’ll take a look but it’s not immediately obvious what graphene brings as an advantage in their product because of the lack of technical details. As recently as 2010 I was working on label-free bio sensors using surface plasmon resonance.The ultimate problem with all of these is specificity for the analyte of interest. This has to be achieved using some sort of molecular recognition. Monoclonal Anti-bodies remain the gold standard. Graphene makes no difference to that.
You’re welcome.
From a pro-graphene site:
https://www.graphenea.com/blogs/graphene-news/51855425-graphene-biosensors
The alleged advantage of graphene for biosensors is that it doesn’t oxidize in air or biological fluids.
“A graphene circuit can be configured as a field effect biosensor by applying biological capture molecules and blocking layers to the graphene, then controlling the voltage difference between the graphene and the liquid” which includes the biological test sample.
Thanks. That was kind of my suspicion. I was working largely with self-assembled monolayers on gold. Some of them did indeed exhibit excellent long term stability and resistance to air degradation. Whether graphene works better, I don’t know, but in every case the company also needs to have some unique intellectual property that can be defended legally.
…And then usually a business plan as to how to make profits from selling consumables because serious profits can’t be realised from selling the device itself. Their products seem closer to market than the ones I was with and I wish them success.
Are they using Cold Fusion to power this elevator? And I hope they are getting the carbon from the atmosphere or this project just will not pass the Green test…
And another thing…when they get these elephants into space, how are they going to feed and water them, and think of all the environmental damage done to a pristine space environment by the geosynchronous orbiting elephant poop…although if you get enough of it floating in space you might block out some sunlight and cool the Earth, so I guess that works.
I just wonder if these scientists have really thought this through?
A flywheel battery?
Great! Until you need to turn a corner.
A space elevator needs to be launched prior to any other missions such as manned stations on mars, or even the moon. The benefits of such an endeavor are unknown because no one has any idea how inexpensive space flight can change mankind. Manufacturing perfect ball bearings in space? Maybe, but not if you need a rocket. What other manufacturing processes could benefit from zero gravity? Nobody knows. Mining asteroids? Maybe. Sending material to Mars? As much as you want. Tourism? You bet.
I suspect the Space Elevator-ness of the new material is a hook to gain publicity — and it sure worked!
But it is a fabulous advance in Materials Science if it “holds up” (ugh.. a pun).
Light-weight, extremely strong is good — and lighter and stronger is better.
I look forward to seeing more details and real applications (if manufacturing can be brought to pass.)
“Elvish” rope, Mr. Fodo?
What’s big, gray, and floats in the air?
A space elephant.
How many elephants can you fit in a spaceship?
Same as a car – 2 in the front, 2 in the back, and one in the glove compartment.
Some elephants are pink.
Really.
Yes, and they even go on parade. The hitch is you have to drink enough champagne to see them. Lots and lots of champagne.
They are virtual elephants. Their only fixed property is mass. They can be any color you wish. Gray is fine. Also any size. And they can eat whatever you want to feed them — or nothing at all — which is surely cheaper and almost certainly more convenient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountains_of_Paradise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke
Maybe this will refocus our grant process on real science as compared to billions on fake science trying to convince everyone of global warming. The western world should be ashamed.
And all this time you’ve been haranguing the Chinese for producing so much CO2 and all along they’ve had a secret use for it. I love it when there’s a “new scientific” breakthrough that will change the world but there’s always a catch…. “But for practical purposes, these carbon nanotubes must be bonded together in cable form, a process which is difficult and can affect the overall strength of the final product.” So in reality this is a modeled breakthrough only as strong as the weakest link.
The problem with the tensile strength is that the carbon nanotube rope would need to be perfectly made all along its length, else would break where there is an imperfection. Same old chain, weakest link problem. It’ll take decades to figure out production.
Not to mention maintenance. Every elevator cab will have to “do its part” to heal broken chemical bonds and add strands.
This is better than the Friday funny…always fun to speculate about the possible. Maybe this is the best that WUWT can offer humanity, which is faith in ourselves to discover truth through science and hope that humanity will get its act together someday. Space is probably the ultimate reality that allows Earthlings to become truly a single species that is not continuously destroying one another.
Theoretically a space elevator is a possibility, although the risk is probably infinitely high that it sooner or later comes crashing down under it’s own weight for any reason. You can’t just ‘dangle’ down a cable from geosynchronous orbit without providing the same upward opposing force. Gravity still applies through a 22,000 mile tether to geosynchronous orbit, and you would have to supply an equal and opposing force to keep it from crashing straight down. But since there is a ‘tether’ at least we can perpetually supply a non stop 24/7 upward thrust force from Earth to keep it elevated, and all the energy, materials and fuels come directly from the Earth non stop and the energy source for the electricity and rocket fuels all come from the planet 24/7.
My new soon to be patented design would be supplied by rocket fuels that are pumped up from ground in a small pipeline that have 24/7 rockets every 1/4 mile supplying at least a ‘hovering’ force thrust that effectively make the ‘dangling tethered tube’ weightless throughout the atmosphere up to space. Just think of a ‘tethered tube’ with side rockets attached that maintain vertical hovering capability making it weightless, all stacked upon one another every 1/4 mile, with all the fuel coming from an Earth based energy rocket fuel pump. With my new and improved rocket powered space elevator, it would only need be about 120 miles high to low earth orbit, wherein the maglev rail launcher would supply the final effort to accelerate the payload to 18,000 mph in the vacuum of space to retain orbit velocity and be truly in outer space and low earth orbit (LEO). We would just need the tethered tube and 480 rocket platforms. Then you can just use existing rocket technology once then we are in LEO and fuels to whatever you want to do, because you can then easily put a lot of materials and fuels into LEO all supplied from ground as well as all the materials, energy and fuels to get it to space. All you have to do is supply enough hovering force to keep any such tethered tube vertical. Then you don’t even need any science fiction super strong material, other than to keep it ultra lightweight, because the thrusting rockets are supplying upward force 24/7 to keep the whole thing perpendicular to the ground and upward to space. All we have to do is supply the ‘hovering’ thrusting force to keep the tube vertical and ‘weightless’ to overcome gravity. And all the materials, electrical energy, and rocket fuels are supplied from a terrestrial based Earth station 24/7 to keep it all ‘weightless’ and vertically upright. We have all the technology to this right now if we want. Just a matter of scale.
Go to Google Earth at the equator and zoom out to 22,236 miles (35,786Km) The Earth looks very, very far away from that perspective. I am surprised my satellite internet can even transmit a signal that far with only 40 watts, and it takes nearly a 1/8 second at the speed of light to get there. (actually 1/2 second return with network delay) A Geostationary orbit is almost 1/10 the way to the Moon, or also nearly the same distance as the circumference of the Earth. (24,901 miles) I don’t think we will ever have anything like a space elevator out that distance to a geostationary orbit. Nor do we need to.
We only have to get to low earth orbit (LEO) and launch whatever we want to orbital velocity from there. As per my above description of utilizing thrusting rockets to lessen the weight of a 120 mile high platform that allows all fuels and materials to be taken that critical distance. Once we are able to very inexpensively get into LEO, then we can just use traditional methods and fuels to do whatever we want to from there. Getting to LEO is what is so expensive because we currently have to launch all our rocket fuel as well from the surface of Earth. Why are we still messing around with older terrestrial based rockets to launch anything other than humans who can’t exceed 3-4 G’s for long. A Maglev Railgun launcher based at the equator in a hollowed out mountain tube would allow us to launch nearly unlimited materials of every kind and rocket fuels to LEO orbit. (ice bullets) Let’s just figure out how to get a lot of materials to LEO orbit very cheaply, and then outer space is truly our oyster and very inexpensive to operate once we are there.
A flywheel battery in a lightweight car works as long as you can drive in straight line. Don’t try to run though, unless you have a pair of rotors that are structurally connected and counter-rotating.
One suggestion was that a tethered space station could be used to deliver payloads to the Moon and other space locations by paying out the payload “upward” on a length of super-cable until they had gained enough energy from centrifugal force to fly off at high speed when released. Wouldn’t the extended cable end with that payload lag behind the space station unless it was accelerated in the forward orbital direction as it was extended?
Centrifugal force doesn’t output free energy, it has to be input in the first place. (My kids didn’t get flung off the playground merry-go-round until their Dad set it spinning.)
The counter weight that is tethered at the top end of the space elevator cable would have to be accelerated, as well as everything that is hauled up to the space station. Since rocket fuel would be doing all that accelerating, and said fuel will have to be hauled up to orbital height, how can it be said that a space elevator saves energy because fuel doesn’t have to be lifted?
SR
My 2nd thought is that while the acceleration energy would need to be provided by burning rocket fuel, the lifting energy could be provided some other other way. Perhaps a nuclear power plant should be built at the ground station.
My 3rd thought is wondering about the materials cost and weight of over 22,000 miles of the hefty electrical transmission cables required.
SR