The article wasn't clear, maybe someone knows — how much stronger is the silk than normal silkworm silk? Comparing it to Kevlar is kind of apples and oranges for someone who doesn't know how Kevlar compares with either spider silk or silkworm silk.
The original article is worth a read. They talk about fiber strength, hypothesize about why, debunk some current conceptions, then test their hupotheses. Then they edit a silkworm's genes as a real world test. I mean dang.
Imagine CRISPR hardwood trees that rapidly grow as tall as Redwoods while maintaining their broad cover and proportions. Would be great both for lumber and to plant in neighborhoods. A Navi/night-elf tree for every subdivision. Having the view and the shade in hot weather may be worth the risks of permanent shading and falling limbs. As long as they're sterile.
People would complain that they drop needles, that birds hang out in them and crap on their cars and sing loudly in the mornings, that they block their light, that they are scared they will blow over in a storm.
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.
Indeed. I’ve seen this attitude everywhere from Uruguay to Uzbekistan to Ulaanbaatar to Ulm - and the people who want to remove nature inevitably win, as it’s a lot easier to destroy than to create.
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.
Imagine when we could bio-engineer our own houses: Grow an acorn room, cut out some windows, water tight it. When the kids grow up, you cut it off from the trunk and regraft it as the planting for their next house. One can only dream...
Not necessarily. Black locust (Robinia psuedoacacia), e.g., is one of the faster growing hardwoods in North America, but produces very hard, dense, and strong wood.
Or maybe not quite that hard. Some woods are already hard enough to be inconvenient to work. Though maybe it's still all benefit if you're just trying to make industrial feedstock for cross laminated timber or something.
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.
They just collect the cocoons of the caterpillar. It’s already pretty industrialized. Farmers grow mulberry bushes and feed the worms and collect the pods. This would be no different. Just a slightly different worm.
People do it as a hobby at home and scaling it is a known process already scaled.
> 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.
Material "strength" is often misunderstood in popular science articles.
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.