Carbon Nanotubes

It was only in 1991 that fullerene tubules were first discovered. This was a new form of Carbon associated with the buckyball structure.

The micro-tubules are cylindrical structures just a few nanometers across, that could be encouraged to form in very long lengths of millions of molecules.

In May 2002, a team of US/Chinese scientist announced that they had produced nanotubes over 20cm long. Given the magnitudes involved, they must be very close to be able to produce usable lengths.

Electrical Properties

Carbon nanotubes appear to offer many opportunities for electrical circuit designers. There is talk of intrinsic superconductivity and the possibility of single strand nanotubes forming the wiring of new generation circuits, promising a huge jump in minitiarisation, performance and efficiency.

Space Elevator

Arthur C.Clarke first introduced the idea of the Space Elevator. This is essentially a tethered geostationary satellite. The tether would provide support for an elevator to lift payloads to and from space.

Until carbon nanotubes were known about, this was definitely science fiction, since no existing material had anywhere near the properties required to make this work. They simply did not have the strength-to-weight required.

But carbon nanotubes do.

A current proposal is for a space shuttle to carry a reel of carbon nano tubes and position in geostationary orbit. The reel would then be unwound all the way to earth, where it would be tethered to somekind of floating platform.

After several strands had been joined with this approach, climber robots would ride the prototype elevator pulling strands with them. All the time, the elevator's capacity to lift higher loads would increase, until at some point commercial payloads could ride the elevator into orbit.

Such a system would totally transform access to orbital space. Here is a link to the relevant Nasa site.