{"id":1631,"date":"2014-08-23T12:50:46","date_gmt":"2014-08-23T17:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1631"},"modified":"2014-09-30T00:10:46","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T05:10:46","slug":"2014-isec-space-elevator-conference-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1631","title":{"rendered":"2014 ISEC Space Elevator Conference &#8211; Day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Day 2 of the conference is underway.\u00a0 Our first presentation is a highly technical one: &#8220;<em>For space elevator rope &#8211; Production of exfoliated graphene and high surface charged-cellulose nanocrystals as stabilizer synthesized by lyophilized acidic hydrolysis<\/em>&#8220;.\u00a0 Dr. Sherif Hindi of King Abdulaziz University, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, gave this presentation via Skype.\u00a0 It was a difficult presentation to understand; a combination of the subject being highly technical, the presentation given via Skype and that English is not Dr. Hindi&#8217;s first language (though his English was excellent).\u00a0 But if I got the gist of it, Dr. Hindi&#8217;s work consists of stabilizing\/purifying Graphene (and thus making it stronger?) via cellulose nanocrystals produced from renewable materials.\u00a0 I will need to review his paper to learn more.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/media\/2014SEC\/Saturday\/IMG_5045F.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/2014SEC\/Saturday\/tn_IMG_5045F.jpg\" class=\"alignleft\" height=\"146\"  width=\"200\" \/><\/a>The second presentation was by Dr. Bryan Laubscher, chief technologist of Odysseus Technologies, Inc. (full disclosure; I am an investor in OTI).\u00a0 He gave us an update on OTI&#8217;s continuing efforts to build longer, stronger nanotubes.\u00a0 He discussed the patents that OTI has made, both in terms of taking existing &#8216;forests&#8217; of nanotubes, drawing off threads and strengthening those threads and also in growing stronger nanotubes themselves.\u00a0 His presentation elicited many questions and a whole lot of discussion.\u00a0 OTI&#8217;s problem now (as with a lot of startups, especially in this field) is funding.\u00a0 OTI is doing a lot with a little &#8211; a little more would certainly help.\u00a0 Dr. Laubscher made the observation yesterday that if you want to really advance the possibility of a space elevator, materials science is the place to be.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve pointed out the obvious many times on this blog that without the materials strong enough to make a viable space elevator tether, this is all just a pipe-dream.\u00a0 Long, strong tubes are the answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Day 2 of the conference is underway.\u00a0 Our first presentation is a highly technical one: &#8220;For space elevator rope &#8211; Production of exfoliated graphene and high surface charged-cellulose nanocrystals as stabilizer synthesized by lyophilized acidic hydrolysis&#8220;.\u00a0 Dr. Sherif Hindi of King Abdulaziz University, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, gave this presentation via Skype.\u00a0 It was a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1689,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}