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"I've been very obsessive about writing science fiction for far too many years. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have given up years ago."
- Charles Stross
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| Synthetic Spider Silk | ||
| Artificial fabric thread as strong as steel. |
A roofed enclosure is under construction on an asteroid; the fabric will be like a tent over a small valley.
| Libby concentrated for an instant, then looked puzzled. "But look -- This valley is a thousand feet long and better than five hundred wide. At half of fifteen pounds per square inch, and allowing for the arch of the roof, that's a load of one and an eighth billion pounds. What fabric can take that kind of a load?"
"Cobwebs." "Cobwebs?" "Yeah, cobwebs. Strongest stuff in the world, stronger than the best steel. Synthetic spider silk, This gauge we're using for the roof has a tensile strength of four thousand pounds a running inch." |
| Technovelgy from Misfit,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1939 Additional resources -
|
Ordinary spider silk is very tough; it is a protein fiber that has a tensile strength comparable to that of high-grade steel and about half that of fibers like Kevlar. Efforts to make garments with it date back to 1709 (if not earlier), when gloves woven from spider silk were presented to the Academy of Science in Paris.
I can't find any clear evidence that synthetic spider silk as described by Heinlein was sought prior to the publication of the story in 1940. There have been recent attempts to create artificial or synthetic spider silk:
Weaving with silk from silkworms is at least 5,000 years old and silkworms have been bred for much of that time.
Compare to silksteel from Alpha Centauri (1990) by Sid Meier and
Plasto-textile from Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov. Also, see goat/spider silk from Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood.
In 2000 Canadian biotechnology company Nexia successfully produced spider silk protein in transgenic goats which carried the gene for it; the milk produced by the goats contained significant quantities of the protein, 1–2 grams of silk proteins per liter of milk. Attempts to spin the protein into a fiber similar to natural spider silk resulted in fibers with tenacities of 2–3 grams per denier...
(From Spider Silk)
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Misfit
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to Misfit
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
Synthetic Spider Silk-related
news articles:
- 'Smart Silk' In Quantity
- Artificial Spider Silk
- Thin Film Dome Protects Cities From Nuclear Blasts
| GNoME AI From DeepMind Invents Millions Of New Materials |
| Omniphobic Liquid-like Surfaces And de Camp's Telelubricator (1940) |
| MXenes - Atomic-Thin Metal Sheets Now Easier To Make |
| Do We Still Need Orbiting Factories? |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
