Improved Transportation

• Today, most airplanes are made from metal despite the fact that diamond has a strength-to-weight ratio over 50 times that of aerospace aluminum. Diamond is expensive, we can’t make it in the shapes we want, and it shatters. Nanotechnology will let us inexpensively make shatterproof diamond (with a structure that might resemble diamond fibers) in exactly the shapes we want. This would let us make a Boeing 747 whose unloaded weight was 50 times lighter but just as strong.

• Today, travel in space is very expensive and reserved for an elite few. Nanotechnology will dramatically reduce the costs and increase the capabilities of space ships and space flight.² The strength-to-weight ratio and the cost of components are absolutely critical to the performance and economy of space ships: with nanotechnology, both of these parameters will be improved…³ Beyond inexpensively providing remarkably light and strong materials for space ships, nanotechnology will also provide extremely powerful computers with which to guide both those ships and a wide range of other activities in space.