For instance, a large space satellite weighing 15 tons carries about 5 tons of copper wiring. The total length of the copper wiring on a Boeing 747 jet is around 216 km, and that is over 2 tons of extra weight. The overheating of these wires causes problems with electronics, which are critical for both aircraft and satellites. Heavy metal wires considerably raise the cost of communication transmission and power lines, as well as their support towers. The improvement of overall qualities of wires could solve a number of existing problems in the aerospace industry and many other industries. We already have the technology to produce wires with throughput and tensile strength characteristics that surpass existing materials by hundreds of times. And we are talking about wires made of nanotubes.

The prototypes of such wires are ten times lighter and thirty times stronger than copper wires. They are 100% more resistant to corrosion in any environment. We plan to start production of carbon nanowires, which are characterized by better conductivity than metal ones when heated. Threads made of carbon nanotubes can be integrated into the ordinary wires of power lines. In our proposed hybrid solution, carbon wires can be used to reinforce a cable much better and with a lower mass than any steel wire ever could.