Rice Contracted to Provide NASA's Quantum Wire 211
geekman writes "NASA is paying Rice University $11 million to build a prototype quantum wire that can conduct electricity 10 times better than traditional copper cables at one-sixth the weight. Rice has four years to build a one-meter-long quantum wire, which will be made out of carbon nanotubes. Seems like a lot of money for a little wire, but then again, all the rocket scientists at Los Alamos have only ever been able to put together a four-centimeter nanotube."
More poorly spent money... (Score:3, Insightful)
NASA is paying Rice University $11 million
Rice has four years to build a one-meter-long quantum wire,
Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to put out a bounty on this wire? Instead of the four year plan, you get the "everyone scrambling to complete it first" plan, and as a bonus, even when someone collects the bounty, all the research done by other institutions still stands.
Re:Ballistic Conduction (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly zero along them, IIRC. This "conducts electricity 10 times better" thing must be talking about the resistance at the required 1 meter length. They've got O(1) resistance, and normal wires have O(n) resistance. A constant factor only makes sense at a constant length.
Re:More poorly spent money... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really, too much risk. It's an unevaluated process. Besides, how many companies would enter? Ten, 150? You've got better chances winning the world poker tour. Bottom line, everyone who isn't first place gets burned and left with a huge bill, no patents, and no $11Million.
Re:More poorly spent money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More poorly spent money... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:More poorly spent money... (Score:2, Insightful)
Also the bounty would result in even more infighting than is usually seen in the scientific community.
Re:More poorly spent money... (Score:3, Insightful)
If it was a bounty, companies would retain the rights to not only the carbon tube, but the process and discoveries which could have other applications.
Re:Ballistic Conduction (Score:5, Insightful)
One of these properties is that the resistance scales logarithmically with the length (not constant, the GP is incorrect). It is still remarkable though, because all other conductors have a resistance that scales linearly with the length (which seems intuitively obvious - but is wrong!).
Re:More poorly spent money... (Score:5, Insightful)
No patents? That assumes this quantum wire can be constructed in one step. If it's more than one step, you can patent everything along the way even if you never get the final step complete -- such as making it feasible at room temperature or something. And, in failing, you might find something that works for other applications. Read up on the history of the Post-It for one such example.
Re:Further strains on my loyalty to my alma mater? (Score:2, Insightful)
It would be interesting to know the weight of the wire in current launch vehicles, as every kilo less of copper wire is a kilo more of payload you can lob into orbit.
Re:More poorly spent money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Any money for this would come from the government through the grant writing process. The number of labs who have a C-60 reactor, and have good control over it, are still reletively small. Not to mention the ability to characterize and sort.
This is not like, say, the space plane, in which most technology is 5-10 years old and all that was required was a bit of money for engineering. These are molecules that really do not yet exist in huge quanities, and putting them together is not well understood. Hell, even the theory of how they conduct electricity is younger that superconductors, and just see how many of those we have around.
Rice and NASA have a very good working relationship. Rice has some of the best people to deal this type of Nanotechnology, plus enough other funding to leverage this small amount of money into a working product.
60 times better? (Score:3, Insightful)
So 10 times better at 1/6th the weight should be the same as 60 time better as copper, or that it conducts the same as copper but at 1/60th the weight. Or 20 times better at 1/3rd the weight. Who's deciding this? I feel like I'm reading an article on futuristic wiring technology, but can't be trusted to deal with any number or fraction that involves a number larger than 10. Fuckers.
Try test equipment (Score:2, Insightful)
You've obviously never priced oscilloscope probe wires before.
Re:How much for a space elevator cable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More poorly spent money... (Score:3, Insightful)
Primary research is both time consuming and expensive. When looking at a long-term, money intensive projects, requiring a ton of intellectual horsepower the Ivory Tower becomes the valuable contractor. However, even though grad students are basically indentured servents, they still require stipeds, and a well-equipped lab is costly to manintain. If you want a prestigeous school to dedicate a portion of it's lab space and intellectual muscle to solving your problem, there is a price to pay.
Frankly, I'm amazed and delighted to see the government funding a bit of basic research. It seems like over the past 15 years or so we've shifted to funding only near-term applied research expected to boost profits for some contributing corporation in the next six months. I know too many high-energy physics PhD's who are working help desks to pay the bills. Time to get back to work!