The key here is scale. What works in inches often falls apart at feet. The structure is holding about 33 psi over the area (which is rigidly supported from below), much more along the contact edges. By comparison balsa wood can support significantly more pressure (varies, but well over 100psi) but doesn’t concentrate pressure on edges.

Is there anything useful about this? Maybe as an inexpensive(?) core for high strength skins?

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JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> The key here is scale. What works in inches often falls apart at feet

Does that mean we could increase the orders of magnitude if we made it smaller? Lots of tiny stuff needs mechanical support. And lots of folded small things agglomerated is another way to say biology.

	▲	Terr_ an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Closer to "mineralogy", plenty of things are both smaller and tougher (on this "support its own weight" metric) than cells or proteins with their squishy folding rules. Even if we include things like hydroxyapatite in teeth, or even lignin, those are more like byproducts of biology than active biology itself.

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refulgentis 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> Is there anything useful about this?

Directly: no, the end of the article has a nice list of reasons why, somewhat hidden

(ex. "Actual shelters...need to respond to multidirectional loads" = these were tested with load in one direction)

Miles, if you're reading this, it's useful. You're already doing what .1% of people do. I call them journeys and emphasize they're a million steps without clear direction, and if you're lucky, maybe positive feedback along the way. You're just on step N < 1,000,000. This works out, in some way, you already know it's not literally "yes this is sooo useful that we should start autofolding it at 1000x scale". It will work out. maybe as exactly this, this with some tweaks, or the $25K helps you do $X, or the publicity helps you do $Y.