Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video]

Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video] by ianai on Saturday August 24, 2019 @10:32AM (#20787333)

Is this strong enough for a space elevator?

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Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video] by aerophilic on Saturday August 24, 2019 @11:43AM (#20787782)

Spider Silk has a tensile strength of 1.3GPa, at a density of 1.3g/cm^3 [0]. This translates to 1300 kg/m3, or a specific strength around 1,000,000.

So short answer is probably “maybe?”, based on the equations here [1], however there are other mitigating considerations, everything from how would you mass produce it, to the fact it can constrict up to 50% when wet. Hopefully those are just engineering problems.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk#Density [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

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Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video] by abakker on Saturday August 24, 2019 @12:02PM (#20787895)

All the synthetic silk products I’ve ever seen are very susceptible to UV damage. Modern synthetic winch lines are synthetic silks, and while they are very strong, they need to be kept covered to ensure UV stability.

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Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video] by ianai on Saturday August 24, 2019 @12:08PM (#20787933)

That’s very informative! What do you figure are potentially new applications for this that aren’t possible without it?

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Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video] by abakker on Saturday August 24, 2019 @08:58PM (#20790685)

Safety. It’s light, and doesn’t store a lot of elastic energy, so when it does fail it doesn’t whip. That is a feature for winch lines and webbing bits for climbing.

Usually with these new fibers, the applications are lightness, since for applications without weight sensitivity steel is pretty awesome.

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Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video] by k__ on Saturday August 24, 2019 @11:40AM (#20787759)

I read somewhere that spider silk has about 4% of the strength needed for a minimal space elevator.

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Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video] by thangalin on Saturday August 24, 2019 @12:26PM (#20788042)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_3mCDM7C8I

Graphene plus spider silk?

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Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video] by BurningFrog on Saturday August 24, 2019 @11:30AM (#20787693)

Nothing is...

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