For some time interest in Buckminsterfullerene, the unique form of carbon created at my alma mater, has focused on Buckytubes, not Buckyballs.
A Buckyball is a single carbon-60 molecule, shaped like a tiny soccer ball. If you don't cut off the ends, and instead extend the shape into a tube, you have a molecule of almost limitless size, and with enormous strength. A space elevator, as I conceive it, is basically a circled Buckytube that reaches from a point at the Equator to geosynchronous orbit, so that a cab coming up one way is matched by one going down.
But in the short run that's science fiction. There is a lot of proof-of-concept work to do before you can really go after the money, and there we're talking of billions-and-billions.
What Buckminsterfullerene needs, more than anything, is a profitable market that will spur further development.
And now it has found one.
The market is medicine. With the merger of CNI, which has a lot of the patent portfolio but was working mainly with tubes, and C60, which was working mainly with the balls, you have an outfit with the heft to go after the profits to be found in fullerenes' ability to attract free radicals.
Free radicals are important beecause many researchers now believe they play a generalized part in the development of many diseases, including cancer. If Buckyballs can act as little magnets and attract these radicals, then expel them as they themselves are expelled, you can eliminate disease before it gets going, or shut off the disease process altogether, quickly and painlessly.
The work is important for a second reason. Unless a profitable demand can be found for fullerenes more won't be made. CNI has scaled back its 2005 production target from 1,000 pounds of the stuff to 100, despite having come up with a new manufacturing process (using carbon monoxide) that cuts the costs of making them.
Whether carbon-60 will become an industry or remain a curiousity is at stake. Profits must be found, and soon.
Merck is backing the medical play. So go for it.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Jay Molstad on January 4, 2005 09:06 PM writes...
It's a side issue, but the space elevator idea seems to be fatally flawed. If the tension in the buckyrope is exerting an upward force on the elevator cars, it must be exerting an equal and opposite downward force on the space station. This force will pull the space station out of geosynchronous orbit unless the station has thrusters to fire. If thrusters must be fired, it's a lot more convenient and efficient to fire them from the ground, since lifting that much fuel into orbit costs fuel.
Jay
Permalink to Comment2. HairyByna on January 4, 2005 11:49 PM writes...
Jay,
Most space elevator designs have the fiber continuing past the station, possibly with a weight on the end. This helps to balance the vertical tensions, but leaves a rotational imbalance at the end of the fiber tether that must be dealt with. Real scientists and engineers that have put forward design have taken these stresses into account.
Byna
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