As strong as steel, elastic able to stretch 5 times its length, and very light weight. I found this interesting. No manmade material can match these qualities.
Holy grail: Artificial spider silk indistinguishable from natural silk • Earth.com
While paddling I usually resist urges to scratch nose and eye itches until they subside. One day though, a spider silk came across my face. That itch just would not go away until I stopped and rubbed it away from my face!
Thaks for sharing, quite interesting! It will be fascinating to see if it gets scaled up and what uses it may is put to. Here is an interesting article about some historic uses and production:
Seems like the fact that it stretches means it will be unsuitable as a replacement for existing fibers like fiberglass, kevlar and carbon in kayaks. They need a novel way to manufacture it into sheets - embedding in a resin matrix won’t work.
I guess that depends on the force it takes to stretch it. I suppose it could also be woven with other materials. Then again, I suspect they will be tweaking the chemistry for different applications.
I got to thinking about the breakthrough on making spider silk and realized that Spiderman did this first back in 1962… 