Chinese Announce Superstrong Fiber Potentially Capable Of Making Space Elevator

[wacojoe]

Could this be light enough and still strong enough to link a cable to a geostationary satellite 22,000 miles in space, which could then support a cheap transportation elevator to it? I assume this is another iteration of graphene, but equally interesting is the concept of using such a strong material to fashion flywheels to store large amounts of energy which could surpass conventional batteries for vehicles and such.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soci...ants-and-space

[Independent Voter]

Who knows, it may come sooner than anyone expects at this time. Normally after the first " breakthrough " advances come with amazing speed.

One just has to look at the airplane to see that work.

[Wannabe]

The cost manufacturing is prohibitive, but then again most all new technologies are super expensive. I think I was in the 5th or 6th grade when I first heard of a pocket calculator. It would add, subtract, multiply, and divide and would have lucky to fit in Capt. Kangaroo's pocket at a cost of about $100 if I remember right which was a Lot of money back then. Now they have them on promotional ballpoint pens. I think ballpoint pens came out about that time also. The cost would have to get Very low because any way you look at it 22,000 miles is a lot of cable and I'm thinking there would have to be multiple cables.

[Truckman]

The cost would have to get Very low because any way you look at it 22,000 miles is a lot of cable and I'm thinking there would have to be multiple cables.

Somebody like Phillbo would just have to climb it so he could jump off the top in a parachute...And how would you keep some ISIS moron from hijacking an airplane just to run into it......Ben

[Phillbo]

I never thought about the fact it would need to be anchored at the equator.....

I'd jump it.

Baumgartner has nothing on me

[Dave Grubb]

There is something that bothers me about that entire description---that is the use of cubic cm (volume) to define the size----I would expect the units to be square cm (area).