CRISPR silkworms make spider silk that defies constraints
genengnews.com
genengnews.com
“CRISPR modified silk worms produce threads made of buckyballs for space elevator”
It’s a fun thought I guess. You’d need a pretty massive crop of mulberry bushes.
No, people want tarmac, concrete, astroturf and air conditioning.
I see this everywhere I go. Nature as an inconvenience, something to be opposed and complained about. Just watched them hack down and mulch a 500+ year old chestnut here because it dropped fruit on the road and someone complained. Never mind that the chestnut had been by that road for longer than modern France has existed. I’m sure they can plant a laurel bush and nature will heal.
Where I live most of the time in very rural Portugal, people are utterly mystified by our desire to protect nature in our land - “but it’s good firewood!”, “animals live there!” (Wild animals == food/fear), “why do you want to live in a dirty forest?”, “how can you bear to live next to a river? Aren’t you scared?”, and on it goes.
Of course there exist people who care about the environment, and prefer greenery to sterility - but they are the minority, always have been, always will be.
Regardless, s-2 glass fiber is probably a better choice
I would appreciate if you can elaborate on that. Not being a material scientist, it's not obvious to me which option is a better choice here, but I am curious to learn.
Spider dragline silk is notable for it's high strength for a stretchy material. These two properties are typically a trade-off. This means that it can absorb a lot of energy before breaking. Great for sutures, climbing ropes, stopping bullets.
For a pressure vessel you want high strength and you don't want it to stretch. So the unique property of spider silk is wasted in the application and it's outperformed by conventional non-stretchy fibers.
If you want a basic understanding, read up on and understand the difference between compressive and tensile yield and ultimate strength (and the specific variations that account for density), toughness, modulus of elasticity, and hardness.
I imagine silk harvesting is already a difficult process, it being the most expensive natural fabric. Then add the step of doing it all in a laboratory environment, the increased regulation and scrutiny. Thats all assume that the technology to make bottle out of silk already exists, if not of course that technology would have to be developed.
People do it as a hobby at home and scaling it is a known process already scaled.
Think bungee jumping. From space.
I wondered what had happened to it, and found this 2019 article: https://www.genengnews.com/topics/genome-editing/crispr-silk..., discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22920275 (just submitted it again at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37628641)