In this case both literally and figuratively. You may have heard of carbon nano-tubes. Scientists have been talking about them for at least a decade and it has been speculated that if we could derive a way to manufacture them reliably they could become one of the strongest known manufacturing materials, and could enable us to develop a host of ‘jetson era’ tech, including my personal favorite, the space elevator.

Scientists at NEC revealed today that they have in fact invented a method for manufacturing them reliably. What’s interesting about this, which I didn’t know until today, is that this technology is also applicable to extending moore’s law. I still don’t know much about how they plan to overcome the ‘electrons jumping the gate’ problem, but this all sounds pretty damn promising. I still hold out hope that I’ll make it out into space in my lifetime, even if I am accompanied by a bossy little robo-assistant 😉 (see previous days postings for context on that one).

One other challenge remains in terms of the space elevator though, we have to figure out how to get the nanotubes to grow in long strands suitable for weaving cables. Stay tuned 😉