this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
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[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 31 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Could this be used to make a space elevator?

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago (2 children)

What about a space escalator?

[–] chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz 17 points 1 day ago

Escalator is smart, because if it breaks, you can still walk to space.

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 5 points 2 days ago

I heard it was for lifts only

[–] Quadhammer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think I remember reading that a structure strong enough would have to be wider than the earth

[–] Nighed@feddit.uk 2 points 1 day ago

The stronger the material the thinner it could be.

There are a lot of properties in the word 'stronger' though.

[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It would probably be strong enough, but not viable to manufacture.

[–] pahlimur@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Extreme doubt on strong enough. The author of this article barely understands the words they are using. Cool it strain hardens, so do so many other materials. Cool it's tough like many other materials. Wow it has more links than others. No actual numbers about toughness, yield, ultimate strength, cycle limits, etc. It's great research, but it absolutely isn't going to magically solve the space elevator issue.

[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Space elevator companies seem to think that materials exist that are strong enough, just that they are not long enough.

https://www.isec.org/space-elevator-tether-materials

Very much layman conjecture, but my assumption is that this material is stronger than carbon nanotubes and graphene.

[–] pahlimur@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Any company will market that its ideas are possible. The article you linked is promising, but take it with a huge grain of salt. They are moving the goalposts the whole article. Flat graphene is a great material for space elevators, but it can't currently be created without defects. Polycrystaline means the graphene created includes defects sort of. It means the graphene they created that is km's long has shitloads of places where cycle loading will cause it to fail way under (like 10%) of its expected load carrying capacity.

Edit: I want this technology to exist. My MS in mechanical engineering focused in materials science tells me we are quite far from it happening.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 12 points 2 days ago (3 children)

"the manufacturing process of the 2D polymer is highly scalable"

First line of the article

[–] j4yt33@feddit.org 0 points 55 minutes ago

It means you can increase the amount you put in to get a higher amount of output, but that doesn't mean it's actually doable in terms of cost or available resources etc

[–] CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ok but there's 'high' and then there's 'low earth orbit'.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 38 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's what my dispensary tells me too

[–] AAA@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

Scalability is not viability.