Hi All

Well it makes sense - unroll a buckytube and you get graphene - a sheet of carbon atoms...

SpaceDaily: Graphene

BBC: Graphene too

...and if it's as strong as its cousin would it make for the ultimate in light-weight sail cloth? I dare say it would. I wonder what the areal density would be? To balance the Sun's gravity with light pressure needs a ratio of 1300:1 for an absorber. At Earth's orbit the Sun is pulling 6*10E-4 gee - a sail needs to mass <4.6*10E-3 grams/sq.metre. Very tricky to do. Graphene makes it feasible - if it blocks light.

Even centimetre-sized sheets would be useful as laser-propelled "slugs" in a starship-pusher. An asteroid base fires them off at ~ 0.125c and as they come in range of the ship it blasts them to plasma with e-beams or lasers, giving a push against the ship's magnetic field.

Adam