How long until we can make this stuff in large enough quantities to make a space elevator?
5, maybe 10
15, if we stray a bit.
>>8018117
stop spamming this graphene meme
>>8018235
Weeks
Never, graphene is a meme
Anyone who thinks that this stuff's supposed strength as measured/predicted at the molecular level in any way corresponds to the generalized bulk strength at the macro level clearly never studied fracture mechanics.
Graphene and nanotube potential is real.
Space elevators are a meme.
>>8019941
Why?
>>8018235
>lightyears
>>8020100
For one thing, the outrageous inefficiency of power beaming pretty concretely ensures that space elevators won't even come close to matching chemical rockets in terms of efficiency and energy-intensiveness unless we make significant advances in power transmission.
>>8020110
beaming the payload up is the best way to make a space elevator?
>>8020110
Power beaming? What are you on about?
>>8020124
Just transmitting electricity up the highly-conductive carbon nanotube cables isn't sci-fi enough.
You gotta add some lasers and microwave beams and shit to make it cooler.
>>8018235
Light-years is a measurement of weight
>>8018235
Yes
>>8020134
Oh you.
>>8018117
Not strong enough.
>>8020134
>the millennium Falcon completed the kessel weigh in at under 12 light years
>>8020124
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator#Powering_climbers
http://www.spaceward.org/elevator-feasibility
>>8020130
>""""""highly conductive""""""
CNTs are conductive, and have been theorized to have superconductive behavior, but actual observations have placed them closer to semiconductors than superconductors. So when you talk about transmitting power over tens of thousands of kilometers through them, that adds up to an overwhelming amount of resistive losses. Supposedly crystallographic defects substantially impact the material's conductivity, and CNT's can rarely even be maintained defect-free at small scales in a laboratory, let alone in a radiation-intensive environment like outer space.
So, power beaming is currently regarded as the most viable method of powering CNT climbers.
>>8020378
In principle, there is no actual lower-bound for the strength of material of a tapered space elevator tether; a weaker material merely requires a more aggressive taper ratio and a more massive tether. However, if you want to make a prismatic tether, then yes, even CNTs are indeed far too weak.
>space elevator collapses
>nanotube dust everywhere
>everyone on earth dies of cancer
>>8018235
Lightyear = the distance that light travels in one year. It's a unit of length.
>>8020562
Uhm
Superconductors are Semiconductors
this shit isn't strong enough to make a space elevator and anyone who tells you so is either an idiot or lying.
>>8018235
Picoseconds
>>8023070
>Superconductors are Semiconductors
Wat!?
