

Making cloth from spider silk - gcv
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/arts/design/23spiders.html

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gcv
_[Golden orb spider silk is] five to six times stronger than steel by
weight..._

Insanely cool.

~~~
ars
If you look at steel under a microscope you see discontinuities, and grains
and other things.

Spider silk however is totally uniform and made almost atom by atom, that's
why it's so much stronger. I believe it's even stronger than kevlar.

~~~
electromagnetic
IIRC it isn't stronger than kevlar, it's roughly equal, however many of the
properties of spider silk are more desirable. I believe the first is that it
is more elastic than kevlar, allowing it to more easily absorb the impact of a
bullet and spread the load. It is significantly more flexible than kevlar,
meaning it can be used to make fully armoured bodysuits (instead of using
overlapping plates), quite literally pants and jackets could be made out of it
comfortably.

Spider silk also has one bonus benefit to it in that it's antiseptic, but it
also supposedly binds into a wound preventing bleeding and acting as a natural
gauze. This would mean that not only could it save your life by stopping the
bullet, but if you got knifed you could actually use your body armour as a
first aid kit.

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GiraffeNecktie
Whatever happened to that company that was going to create spider silk in bulk
using the milk from genetically engineered goats? That was a big story about
five or six years ago but I haven't heard anything since. Sure sounds easier
than putting spiders in tiny harnesses.

~~~
aarongough
Last I heard they were having problems with the stability of the silk
produced. Apparently it would start to break down within a month or two,
losing all of it's unique tensile properties in the process...

I had a quick look around but couldn't find anything to back that up. The
applications they mention on this page
<http://www.nexiabiotech.com/en/01_tech/01.php> talk a few times about how
'biodegradable' the silk is though...

~~~
ars
Biodegradable spider silk is pretty useless.

You would want to use it for things like suspension bridges, bullet proof
vests, high tension electrical lines. Space tethers even maybe.

Things that are not disposable.

I have a hard time thinking of a disposable application for a fiber that is
stronger than steel. Unless it was really really cheap.

~~~
aarongough
On their website one of the first applications they listed was for sutures in
eye surgery. Apparently the high initial tensile strength and biodegradability
make it perfect for that.

I agree though that most of the interesting (and widespread) uses require a
material that is not biodegradable.

I would love to have a spider-silk ballistic/stab vest... That would be a
_very_ cool piece of kit...

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biohacker42
Oh they did it the old fashioned way, neat but sadly not as interesting as
gene splicing would have been. Gene splicing would make it possible to produce
spider silk fabrics for less then one million.

We have spliced some spider silk protein genes into goats, and their milk does
contain those proteins, and we can crystallize them into large crystals. But
that's not silk, spider silk is those proteins carefully assembled along with
H2O molecules to create threads.

Another problem is, spider silk tends to rot pretty quickly.

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idm
FTA: "...to show what Mr. Peers and Mr. Godley — along with more than a
million spiders and a dexterous team of intrepid Malagasy spider handlers —
had accomplished."

"...an endeavor that, as he has written, always seemed to be 'imbued with
metaphor and poetry, with nightmare and phobia.'"

Yes. That.

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diiq
So that's undyed? What a fantastic color. Yet again the inadequacies of
digital interfaces driving me mad --- I want to _see_ it! And (no doubt I'll
never get the opportunity) _touch_ it.

I'd like my VR now, please.

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wlievens
From the title I thought this would be about Dwarf Fortress.

