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New Technique for Creating Nanotube Sheets 147
Quetzalcoatl writes "A team of researchers has come up with a way to make strong, stable sheets of multiwall nanotubes at a rate of seven meters per minute. These sheets already display a number of remarkable qualities that lend them to many different applications, including artificial muscles, transparent antennas, video displays and solar cells."
Dupe (Score:4, Informative)
nanotubes? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:nanotubes? (Score:5, Informative)
Adding a protective net around the just described properties of the foam, will makes you run the risk that the foam will really behave bad. The foam could instead of fail in pieces fail as a whole, causing this ultra strong net to fly around in un unpredictable way.
Adding the net not around the foam but instead around the shuttle will take care that shuttle arrives in one piece in space. The material however is not heat proof. It will fail under high temperature, actually the outside of the space shuttle is a "controlled" failure, in which after several flights certain parts are replaced. If your net fails on the way back, the shuttle can still loose the vital tiles and not land in one part.
Your idea is not a bad one, and does not need a superhightech foam perse. Just a flexible PE layer could do the trick. The tank will never gets really hot (it is dumped before that happens, and then burns itself on the way down, nobody cares about that part of the trip). Maybe adding a second wiring in the foam itself with some fiber will help too, it will be more complex though.
Last but not least: this problem is a problem invented by Nasa. The foam would not or be less necessary if Nasa used a different fuel (kerosine like the Russians), or would keep the shuttle in a lower surrounding temperature condition.
Shuttle prep (Score:2)
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/facilities/tour.html [nasa.gov]
And
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/facilities/crawler.ht
Re:Shuttle prep (Score:2)
Re:nanotubes? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with the foam is that Nasa loves to leave the shuttle outside for days with an unstable foam (suspectable from sun hardening/creating cracks, soaking up moisture from the atmosphere which then freezes, widening the cracks).
There have been no studies that indicate that the few days that the main tank spends outside the vehicle assembly building have any effect at all on the foam's stability. Quite to the contrary, the evidence suggests that it's the method of applica
Re:nanotubes? (Score:2)
Anyway: As you point out yourself too luckily: It is the design (irregular shape etc) which increases temperature problems and with that ice formation.
With LOX/LH2 rockets there is a very simple solution in use against ice: Just launch the rocket, the ice falls of at launch, and since there is almost nothing it can fatally hit on the way down, or which will be used again, it is not an issue.
Ablative properties: Sorry, I was thinking the wrong way around in the
Re:I'm confused.. (Score:2, Informative)
Just remember... (Score:5, Interesting)
No Flash Photography of the nanotubes please. [physicsweb.org]
They will explode.Re:Just remember... (Score:5, Informative)
To quote the original article: (Emphasis mine)
stable sheets of multiwall nanotubes at a rate of seven meters per minute.
To quote your link:
The multiwalled nanotubes did not burn at all.
They will not explode.
Re:Just remember... (Score:2)
I wanted to explode</GIR>
Re:Just remember... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just remember... (Score:1)
New material for Brisith soldiers underwear? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:New material for Brisith soldiers underwear? (Score:2)
Re:New material for Brisith soldiers underwear? (Score:1)
Bravery! (Score:4, Funny)
Or... (Score:1)
BA-DUM-TSSSHHH!
Re:New material for Brisith soldiers underwear? (Score:1)
Leaving aside the whole composed-of-a-mesh-of-threads-rather-than-a-barri
Re:New material for Brisith soldiers underwear? (Score:2)
A bit like having a massage in a bullet-proof vest.
And Sarah Mclachlan sings! (Score:5, Funny)
It's more than I can handle"
Jeez...there's what.. (looks at file size) a 6.7MB video of this?
And it's a dupe!
Bravo! I genuflect in the direction of Slashdot, honoring its unlimited power to bring fear and loathing into the hearts of system administrators everywhere!
--
BMO ++ ATH0 NO CARRIER
I don't care. My Karma Is Bigger Than Yours
Re:And Sarah Mclachlan sings! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And Sarah Mclachlan sings! (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, this might just be one they missed...
Re:And Sarah Mclachlan sings! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:And Sarah Mclachlan sings! (Score:4, Interesting)
That gives me an idea... (Score:2)
Oh, right, it would be kinda freaky seeing all the stories filtered out on the main page...
Re:And Sarah Mclachlan sings! (Score:1)
Smart Stuff (Score:1)
Even if that doesn't happen, I wouldn't be suprised if we get our first superconductors from methods like this.
hockey stick tape (Score:1)
Re:hockey stick tape (Score:2)
The NHL will ban it, in favor of laminated nanotube pucks and more steroids. That is assuming that we actually have a season this year.
--
BMO 'What are you doing?' 'We're putting on the foil' - Slapshot
Suggestion for the editors (Score:3, Insightful)
Made in USA (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't understand potential applications, but if the physicists/material-sci people are saying it is great, I guess it is really great.
Somehow, though, I fear it will get commercialized first in Japan, and then rapidly the Chinese will be making money off the stuff.
Re:Made in USA (Score:1, Troll)
Sometimes slogans about innovation and creativity do work out, however in the long run, the outsourcing campaign will need a new slogan.
Re:Made in USA (Score:1)
Insensitive moderator!
record (Score:5, Informative)
Re:record (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:record (Score:1)
Re:record (Score:2)
Re:record (Score:1)
http://slashdot.org/index.pl?issue=20030218 [slashdot.org] if you want to see it first hand.
Re:record (Score:1, Offtopic)
Meanwhile, every post that bitches about the dupe means another ad being served. Yeah, you dudes are doing a real bang-up job on encouraging Slashdot to not dupe.
Re:record (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:record (Score:1)
not consumer ready (Score:2, Funny)
Burnin' Karma (Score:5, Funny)
Posting the article twice after he pays up - Priceless
Scientists at Blistering Pace! (Score:4, Funny)
ObQuote (Score:2)
--Steven Wright
Dear ScuttleMonkey! (Score:4, Insightful)
He has also duped himself [slashdot.org] more than once, something you'll have to master before dethroning him.
Amazing (Score:2)
I can see that already (Score:3, Funny)
"Are you amazed at how nanotubes _are_ produced? See _brief_ article for more details".
Breakthrough discovery! (Score:4, Funny)
-
Enough already! I want my ... (Score:4, Funny)
And please refrain from modding me Funny. I am in fact serious: All this nano-research is fine and dandy, but it really doesn't _do_ much for us until actual products emerges on the consumer market. "us" being you and me, as opposed to science and nano-technology research(ers).
In all sincerety, it would be great to see infinitely sharp and durable cheese cutters, or full-body workclothes that are strong and light, or, for that matter, that fabled space elevator. We are, after all, living in the (also-fabled) 21st century.
______
[1] Arthur C. Clarke, "Foundations of Paradise" p.53 (ISBN 0446677949)
Re:Enough already! I want my ... (Score:3, Funny)
I hear you. As it stands you have to buy a new one every three or four garottings, and for some reason you get funny looks when you ask to buy in bulk...
Thin Edge (Score:2)
Re:Enough already! I want my ... (Score:2)
Why:
Cutting yourself would become realy dangerous, as it wouldn't just be a skin deep cut, but would just slice your fingers right off. Imagine something like a papercut, but with a material much sharper, more effective, capable of cutting bone.
This is the reason why a cheese cutter is much more blunt as a razor blade, and razorblades themselves aren't sharper themselves.
Re:Enough already! I want my ... (Score:2)
Still, we do have sharp 'weapons' in household appliances, and I would make a case that such things are quite safe if regarded and treated as such. (But then, I live in a country where you (probably) can't sue for the consequence of lack of common sense.)
Maybe it just all comes down to it being a Money Issue. Not in the sense of nifty carbo
Re:Enough already! I want my ... (Score:1)
The case doesn't have to be uncuttable, it just has to provide a finger guard, like a fan grille in a pc PSU.
Ringworld - Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle (Score:2)
Transparent Aluminium (Score:1)
Re:Transparent Aluminium (Score:1)
Re:Transparent Aluminium (Score:2)
The future might not want us neither... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Why The Future Doesn't Need Us." This is the kind of tech that makes me think the future might not only not need us but might want to tidily get us out of the way while it's at it.
This is cool stuff but every instance of this stuff should be registered like a lethal weapon and accounted for and contained in class-4 biocontainment before we figure out how we can learn how to safely get rid of this stuf
System Wide Web (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine a gang of ribbon robots (ribbots?) in Solar orbit, each with a tank of feedstock. They roll their ribbons out from a central equipment cluster towards a circumference 10Km away. The whole rig is spinning, the "centrifugal force" keeping the ribbons straight towards the circular rim. Pairs of magnetically linked ribbots literally weave ribbons around the ribbon spokes, just like spiders weaving their webs, welding paths around the center to the spokes. Now there's a 300Km^2 circle, weighing 10tons collecting 4TW of uninterrupted solar energy.
Even if this film is only a little better at photoelectrics than current PVs, that's over 1TW, the entire US electrical consumption. Put two up there, mount a soviet-style maser array (98% efficiency) pointed at a relay platform floating out in the Pacific. We can recycle all our power plants, coal mines, and petroleum "allies" into national parks or shopping malls (I know which one I'd convert the nuke plants to).
If we float the "PowerWeb" in Solar orbit closer to the Sun, we don't even need as large an area: halfway to the Sun gets 4x the power, over 5KW:m^2. OTOH, since the material is so strong, light (and maybe cheap), we can make them really big, without worrying too much about shear and ripple forces tearing the web. If we put a couple dozen of them floating around the Solar System, maybe in some concentric rings vertical to the ecliptic, we could install a power grid for exploration and colonization of our entire Solar System. A "light rail" capturing Solar energy, and beaming it against a fleet of solar sails, shuttling crews and cargo around. All at the speed of the original Age of Sail, except a few weeks could get us around from Earth thru Neptune - mere days for unmanned craft at >1G.
And this is just the first generation of the tech. Both the material and the factory will get smaller, lighter, cheaper, better. I just hope the American vision of scientific exploration proves worthy of the promise of this stuff. Because I'd hate to switch paying my power bills from Saudi Oil to Chinese Electric.
fire phasers (Score:3, Interesting)
I admire your vision. But I'm afraid that orbital maser arrays will more likely be pointed at Riyadh
-kgj
Re:fire phasers (Score:2)
Re:System Wide Web (Score:2)
Yes, but in addition to converting 1TW to electricity, it is converting 3TW to heat. Imagine the heat pipe properties of the material conducting all that straight to the core. Actually, what you would expect would be for the system to be isothermal. In the vacuum of space (no conduction or convection losses), however, the only way to get rid of that much heat is to get very hot and radiate it. Fortunately, radiation increases with the fourth power of temperature and the back side of the array can be poi
Re:System Wide Web (Score:2)
Re:System Wide Web (Score:2)
Even with 100% efficient power transmission, the space station you described is capable of powering new york city, not the US. 10,000m^2 * pi * 1000W/m^2 * 20/100 (efficiency) = 62GW. This is much lower than your projected yield of 1TW. So, now we are looking at a much smaller dent in the US energy budget. You are taking about a solar cell area of 314Mm^2 (typo: 300Km^2 is 300K square meters, not 300K square kilometers). There are about 100 million households in the US. So, you can take the sam
Re:System Wide Web (Score:2)
As for NYC, cove
Re:System Wide Web (Score:2)
Re:System Wide Web (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, that $7K:Kg figure is what I've heard,
Re:System Wide Web (Score:2)
Laser: without adaptive optics, the concept is all but dead in the water. Adaptive gives the needed focus over the critical range. The best currently available high power laser has an efficiency of 3%. The best cells to go with that laser are 59% efficiency, 82% filled at that frequency.
Microwave: 2.4, 35, and 94 GHz were considered in multiple separate studies, with different kind
Re:System Wide Web (Score:2)
Re:System Wide Web (Score:2)
There's lots of evidence that global warming and cooling is determined more by Sun activity than anything happening on Earth. Today, you only dump and extra TW of energy into our atmosphere. But then energy gets so cheap that no one will see a reason
Re:System Wide Web (Score:2)
Of course Earth warming is, at root, mostly governed by the Sun's insolation. But the vast preponderance of the evidence, which has produced the overwhelming scientific consensus, is that hu
Re:System Wide Web (Score:2)
30% Interesting
40% Offtopic
30% Insightful
TrollMods say my post about applying the nanotube sheets, that the article describes, to solar power/sails in space, is "Offtopic". That's not even a stupid way to unaccountably contradict my post. It's just a bunch of weaselly Slashstalkers [slashdot.org].
Read before you jump to conclusions (Score:3, Informative)
Taking advantage of the dupe... (Score:1)
http://www.nature.com.nyud.net:8090/news/2005/0508 15/full/050815-8.html [nyud.net]
And the official press release from UT Dallas...
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/uot a-utd081505.php [eurekalert.org]
Nanize Me! (Score:3, Interesting)
My gut says no... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe a premature announcement to get additional funding for a project that's still decades away from seeing results, I dunno... but something about this just screams "cold fusion" to me, and I don't think we'll ever see it.
Paper cuts (Score:2)
---
Nano nano
Mork
healing nano-sheet paper cuts (Score:2)
Sure, but you'll be able to buy a nanotube bandage for that cut -- stops the bleeding, and bulletproof too!
-kgj
Dupes aren't such a bad idea (Score:1)
Based on this same idea, people can filter out stories which are above a certain threshold of importance.
Re:Dupes aren't such a bad idea (Score:1)
A question for polynomial_zeroes (Score:2, Funny)
Remember: the number of roots of a polynomial is equal to its order.
Re:Space elevator (Score:1)
Re:Space elevator (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Space elevator (Score:2)
Re:Space elevator (Score:1)
Re:Space elevator (Score:1)
Re:Space elevator (Score:2)
At 7 meters/minute, it's right around 10KM a day.
5112285 Minutes.
85204 Hours
3550 Days
9.73 Years. You can have two machines working, one dropping cable, one releasing cable to a higher orbit(for balance).
I think they need to speed it up a bit
Re:New Technique for Creating Nanotube Sheets (Score:1)
Instead of whining about it being a dupe. Just don't read the article. What a concept.
Re:New Technique for Creating Nanotube Sheets (Score:3, Insightful)
But you don't know it's a dupe until you RTFA, and by then it's far too late. It's like when Laurie Anderson says about what you do in the morning when you eat your cereal, and you're just staring at the box reading...reading and eating, and then you discover that what you've been eating what you're reading.
And then it really _is_ too late.
Here's a concept: stop wasting my time with your concepts.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:1)
Re:New Technique for Creating Nanotube Sheets (Score:2)
Re:New Technique for Creating Nanotube Sheets (Score:2)
Re:Queue.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Amusingly, nobody checks to see if a comment on it being a dupe already exists before they rush to the reply button.
Re:Queue.... (Score:2)
In this context, the difference between those two words isn't all that significant. But, hey, if you're going to overzealously nitpick somebody's post because they're pointing out the silliness of your views, I guess you'll take what you can get.
Nanoshells (speres) online @ PBS/Nova (Score:4, Interesting)
PBS Nova [pbs.org] is offering online playback of a really neat series called Science Now [pbs.org].
The second episode included a neat profie of researcher Naomi Halas [pbs.org] who studies nanoshells -- spheres rather than tubes. One potential appication is as a treatment for cancer.
manufacturing nano-phages (Score:2)
I'm guessing not biodegradable
-kgj
e. coli forever (Score:2)
a: Neither is your BBQ charcoal!
That's why we need bacterial phages tailored to digest charcoal briquettes.
Plus, I'd like another martini, please design bacteria tailored to excrete top-shelf liquor.
-kgj