this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
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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.
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.