Carbon nanotubes

Let's say you're going to buy a 1-meter length of wire from me. How much would you pay for it? 50 cents? A dollar? $10? Well, recently NASA gave a contract to a university to buy a 1-meter length of wire and they're going to pay $11 million. Seems like a whole lot of money, doesn't it? Well, maybe it makes more sense if I tell you that the wire is not going to be made of copper or steel or even silver, gold or platinum. Instead, it's going to be made of a new material called carbon nanotubes, which were only really discovered in 1991.

Carbon nanotubes are cylinders made of individual atoms of carbon that are formed when a laser smacks into a block of carbon and carbon nanotubes have some really interesting properties and they're really going to be important in two areas: power generation and space.

Let's talk about power. See this line here. Let's say it's not a 1-meter length of wire anymore. Let's say it's an electric power grid and over here is your city and over here is your power plant. As you may know, it's not uncommon for 25% or more of the electricity generated by our electric power plants to be lost as it gets transmitted over the grid of mainly copper wiring. Carbon nanotubes in theory can be 10 times better conductors of electricity than copper and they only weigh one-sixth as much. If you have ever been out, you know, on the country side and you've seen the massive wiring stations the generation plants need, you can see that a material like carbon nanotubes has the possibility to really help with our power needs.

Now what is NASA interested in carbon nanotubes for? Well, this seems a little outfield, but bear with me because it's theoretically possible according to physics. Here's the earth. Let's say you want to get something into orbit right now. We use rockets. We use the shuttle, very expensive, dangerous. It's theoretically possible to build what people call a space elevator. You can take a point in space that's around 62,000 miles above the earth and put something there. It stays in geosynchronous orbit. That means it doesn't move. Now if you could find a way to build a cable that could run from the earth up to here, this point never moves, you can build a space elevator and you could easily, much less expensively move people and products and machines up and down into space. The problem is if you build this wire out of steel or copper or any kind of traditional metal, it's going to be way too heavy and would collapse. Theoretically, NASA is looking at the possibility of using carbon nanotubes to someday build the 62,000 miles space elevator. So carbon nanotubes, maybe it's worth $11 million.