[yiyus]

Starting construction without having the needed materials is the approach followed at ITER. This way of working is based in a very reasonable idea: available materials have been improving since ever, there is no reason to think this progress will stop now.

[mcv]

But it's hard to even imagine what something stronger than carbon nanutubes would look like. How much stronger than diamond-like molecular bonds can you get?

[yiyus]

According to simulations, 58% [1]. Experimental confirmation is still needed. Although we are still far from it, it is something that we could see in our life times.

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16610-diamond-no-long...

[wcoenen]

Hardness is not the same as tensile strength.

[yiyus]

I know. From the linked article: "The simulation showed that wurtzide boron nitride would withstand 18 per cent more stress than diamond, and lonsdaleite 58 per cent more." The title of the article is misleading.

[wcoenen]

The title of that article is accurate, where it says "stress" they are really referring to hardness and not tensile strength. The quoted 58% comes from this paper, it talks about "hardness" and "indentation strength" in the abstract:

http://sci-hub.cc/10.1103/physrevlett.102.055503

[yiyus]

You are right, I stand corrected. They actually talk about tensile strength in the PRL article:

"It is noted that lonsdaleite exhibits almost identical ideal tensile strength and only slightly larger pure ideal shear strength compared to diamond. The significant enhancement in its indentation strength occurs under biaxial stress loading conditions. The situation in w-BN versus c-BN is similar. All past calculations have shown that diamond exhibits the highest strength under various loading conditions compared to other materials, which was consistent with all available measurements. Here we show for the first time that w-BN and lonsdaleite exhibit higher strength than diamond under indentation."

So, indeed, diamond is still the winner here.

[the8472]

we could start by getting an asteroid into orbit, this could be used as orbital station, construction site and counterweight for a future elevator