there has been a lot of hype on carbon nanotubes, but also a lot of doubts. in the end it all comes down to the point that it's good for getting research money. just call it nano. no matter what. downscaling has going on for a long time in material research and playing around in the nanoworld is nothing really new. materials today reports on the topic and also has an interesting comment from nicole grobert: nanotubes grow or go.

It has even been suggested that
nanotubes could be used to construct a space
elevator ...

it will take a long time until predictions of that kind will be more than fiction.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were first identified by Morinobu Endo et al.in the late 1970s and caused
tremendous interest when Sumio Iijima published
his paper in Nature in 1991 ...

material science is not a quick shot, but the window of opportunity is just a glimps for one or another cio.