Carbon Fiber replacement?

Bucky paper and carbon nanotubes have been in the news lately as an incredibly upgraded form of carbon fiber. Any of you materials guys know about this stuff? Seems to be happening at Florida State University. It's still early but worth a Google search.

Overview with links

Carbon nanotubes do possess a number of properties that would make them top candidates for very strong fibers.
At least in experiments on the micro-scale they have shown an extremely high modulus of elasticity and "inverse buckling properties" (that is they don't break easily).
To my knowledge (status of 3 years ago) there were still a number of problems such as
- how to produce large amounts of long nanotubes
- how to embed nanotubes in a polymer to achieve a tight connection between the polymer and the nanotube
- how to keep nanotubes distributed in the polymer (they tend to build lumps)

Nanotubes could possibly be the future, but it is still a long way to go.

CEitzi

Another problem with nano tech is its demonstated ability to be incorporated into the body at the cellular level, with health risks the can make asbestosis seem mild.