Mannerisms

Director of the association is the professor of precision machinery at Nihon University, Professor Yoshio Aoki,

Space elevators were always mentioned as the killer app for carbon nanotubes, when carbon nanotubes were first popularised.

I had assumed that it was pretty nigh impossible to lay a couple of CNTs end to end with any hope of them sticking together but now, it seems, modern CNTs need only to get 4X stronger to be able to build a space elevator.

And getting 4X stronger shouldn't be a problem, because CNTs have been getting stronger at a rate of 100X every five years.

The project will cost $9 billion, says the association, and will use 62,000 miles of cable.

It seems a good wheeze for Japan to finally upgrade itself from being the world's long-time No.2 economy, to No.1.

While the US seems determined to bankrupt itself with a $700 billion plan to save the bonuses of  Wall Street financiers, Japan is doing something useful with its money.

Once Japan has its Space Elevator, it can build a space-based solar power station to power the earth, a space-based laser to zap its enemies and a space-based early warning system for short-sellers of stocks.