What I forgot to say was that in the preface to the edition of Fountains of Paradise that I had, Arthur C Clarke took pains to give the credit for the idea of a space elavator to a Russian cosmonaut (can't remember his name) as he was embarrased by the many press reports attributing the idea to him.
Science Fiction writers do tend to come up with some good ideas though. Clarke got communication sattelites, and I believe it was clarke who also thought of water beds
, he thought for hospital patients, but it prevented others from patenting them at a later date.
I just want some of that monofilament carbon that the lead character had in the book, would cut though anything like it was cheese, might even be able to open milk cartons without spilling it everywhere.