Bad News for Space Elevators...

This article suggests that, sadly, space elevators might not be practical using new carbon nano-tubes.

This isn't altogether surprising to me, the world of material science of littered with "might have been" super materials that turned out not to be quite as good as predicted or hoped. When I was doing my degree the same thing happened with ceramic fibres.

Something else that occurs to me is about carbon interstitial atoms. In other, also stable, forms of Carbon you can get some really weird effects in the lattice, especially where there's high energy radiation involved - these atoms can get "knocked" into the wrong part of the structure and de-stabalise it. It's a potentially huge problem for graphite in nuclear reactors.

I'm wondering if the same could apply to Space Elevator cables - in which case Carbon could be ruled out. Paul, Del? Any thoughts?

Wine

For the first time in ages I've decided to have a glass of wine with dinner. It's lovely, as will be the Pasta when M gets home.

We're not going to Preston for the weekend. M might be off to NYC for a month next week to support the project there so we want to maximise our time together.

Anything up around London over the weekend?