Nanotube Strength, Bad News for Space Elevators [2019]

In a recent article from Nature, scientists finally were able to test the strength of nanotubes which is amazing news from the depths of the nanotechnology realm nevertheless, it looks like space elevators will remain in the land of science fiction a bit longer, but not everything is bad news.

Well it turns out that there are three configurations that you can make nanotubes in and that is what they tested, all of the three configurations yields completely different strength values, which is ok, but the problem is that in some cases the strength is well below the 63 GPa while other times it barely passes that. However, it never even gets close to the predicted values of 100 – 200 GPa.

Sources

Strength of carbon nanotubes depends on their chemical structures
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10959-7

Low-temperature Synthesis of high-purity single-walled carbon nanotubes form alcohol
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.8.7770&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Fullerene Nanotubes: C 1,000,000and Beyond: Some unusual new molecules —long, hollow fibers with tantalizing electronic and mechanical properties—have joined diamonds and graphite in the carbon family
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27856810?read-now=1&seq=9#metadata_info_tab_contents