Nanotube production has been ramping up significantly and the price has been dropping as new more effective processes are developed. Remember whatever is developed on an industrial scale must be price competitive with existing materials. This is just another sign of the movement from research and pilot plants to true industrial production with many applications coming down the pipe. Cables for such things as bridge suspension are made of very long drawn wires. I think it is probably impractical to try to make long cables from threads only millimeters long, so this development of starting with much longer threads is probably a very big advance for some applications.

What makes all this especially exciting is the bootstrapping of this industry with dollars and research because of the rich application space. We should see rapid and continuous advancement of the field which is good news for we futurists who hope this may lead to the necessary material advance for a space elevator.