OK, as I said, I don't know exactly how Vantablack is applied, but nanotubes could easily be incorporated in powder coatings and be totally sealed in the coating.
If Vantablack is grown on the surface, it should be even more 'attached' at the molecular level to that surface, shouldn't it? Once the loose powder was cleaned off, that seems like it would be much better than paint at sticking permanently, no?
A sprayable paint version would have to be mixed with a liquid that makes it sprayable and makes it stick, so I would expect it to be 'sealed' in that liquid once it cures, just like any pigment in any paint. Also, clear coats could seal it in if that's not the case, at least as good as any other toxic paint. EDIT: Since nanofibers can withstand high temperatures, they could even bake on a clear powder coating that's WAY tougher than clear coat to seal it if needed.
Most paints use highly toxic chemicals too. Just because there's no lead doesn't mean it's non toxic....in fact, it might be MORE toxic, just not in the same "brain damaging" way.

I have actually personally worked with nanotubes. I had a friend I worked with that had a carbon fiber business that did dozens of experiments with it for multiple projects, including a carbon fiber bullet and machine-able solid carbon blocks. He'll probably be the one to watch to see how dangerous they are, he rarely used any type of protection and I'm sure he inhaled multiple grams worth of nanotubes in his time, and has them imbedded in his skin all over his body. All of his products used resin to liquefy and harden the nanotubes into the shapes he wanted, so in the end products, it was "sealed" into a non-powder form, but not during production.

Your video, Pouring Liquid Nitrogen in Pool, AKA I Set My Pool on Fire, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

***update -- I was wrong about P-47 having a rotary engine, confused *radial* with rotary. Other than noting that mistake here, I'll leave my original comment unedited below (in which I draw erroneous conclusions based on that brain fart):

@eric3579 and @newtboy -

I was also quite interested in the "advantages" question. My grandfather was an armorer on P-47 "Thunderbolt" aircraft in WW2, and I knew that rotary engines were used in those.

Both of your answers tie in to the strengths of P-47s during the war. They were considered very reliable and resistant to damage (sorta like a WW2-era A-10; they could take a beating and make it back home). And of course, in internal combustion powered aircraft, power to weight ratio is even more important than in automobiles.

So, I'm sure that some of those strengths were at least partially due to the use of a radial engine. Not entirely, because other things in the design played a big role also -- like the fact that the P-47 engine was air cooled, so it didn't need a radiator system. As I understand it, comparatively light damage to a liquid-cooled aircraft like a P-51 that happened to damage the cooling system could disable or force them down for repairs... Not to knock the amazing piece of engineering that the Mustang was, but for sheer ability to take a beating and stay in the air, the Thunderbolt may have been the best US fighter in the war.

Ahhh, a request for a telling of 'the saga of the broken newt'.

The first time was ridiculous, remodeling my bathroom and lifting a heavy cast iron tub by hand, not realizing it was liquid nailed to the sub floor. I crushed a vertebrae, popped a disk, and severed the nerve that operates below the knee. I was completely paralyzed below the knee for over 6 months, then for about 1 1/2 years I had partial feeling and movement, it was like my leg was completely asleep that entire time....and still is to a small extent (weakness, pins and needles).
The second time, I ran my car into a highway divider head on at 55mph and went airborne. Good thing it was an Acura Legend, a tank of a car, or it certainly would have been far worse. I was already so irreparably broken, I didn't even go get another MRI for that one, which was probably a bad idea. I still have extra back pain from that (6+ years after the fact), but it didn't do new nerve damage (that I know of) so I just accepted it as one more injury to add to the (excessively long) list.
I am accident prone, and don't take proper care of myself. I'm now paying for over 4 decades of that behavior.

All of these Surrey NanoSystems videos about Vantablack are quite interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcstydRR1-x4hLyFcqigu4w/videos

(they dip it in water and liquid nitrogen too)

It's alright. I got bored. Forwarded through a bit and the baseball smash was super like totally wow cool. Smashing a baseball. I think I did that with an electric vice. Used to smash shit all day smoking pot, whiskeyed out, at least 6 beers into an LSD trip.
Was there music then? Not sure. Might have been real.
Anyway, what is reality these days? I think it's
4 hours of sleep, 6 hours of driving, 12 hours
of working, and 2 hours for divided by all
the entertainment leading to such a
density of complexity the grey
matter in my head has
liquidized and oozed
out through my
ears, dripping
drip
drip
drip
drip
drip
dr
i
p
.

That seems like a lot of gas...maybe someone was cleaning out an entire garage (estate sale?) and dumped ALL the cans of spray paint into a box and a liquid propane container marked "empty" (jokes on you) and all that got tossed in there?

Don't forget all that genetically-altered fructose (or nonmetabolizable substitute) is there to mask the heaping quantity of salt. Why the salt? To make you thirsty for more liquid candy of course!

As always, my views are just a layman's perspective with no claims to expertise.

@RedSky

You correctly point out the intent of the reform, to stop fractional banking which they diagnosed as a primary driver of volatility within the financial sector. They want to revert back to a system where the banks were intermediaries the way you described it: deposit leads to loan, in this case at a maximum ratio of 1:1, no leveraging.

Unlike the current system where bank deposits are mostly created by banks themselves -- the act of lending creates deposits. In fact, deposits are liabilities of the banks, not assets. Reserves are assets, but they are only traded between entities with accounts at the central bank. And, in normal times, are provided quite freely by the central bank in exchange for other assets.

Anyway, "Vollgeld" places the ability to create money exclusively in the hands of the central bank. Controlling the amount of money in circulation was a concept most central banks were eager to drop during the '90s, since it never worked. Demand for credit is volatile, central control is inflexible, even if they could somehow quanfity the need for it ex ante -- which they can't. Hell, they can't even do it ex post. You can't quantify the need for additional money beyond what's already in circulation if the central bank's action set the conditions for a dynamic development in the first place. You can't know in advance what increases in production need to be financed, you can't know how demand for liquidity evolves over time. The quantity theory of money was buried for a reason, it ignores reality.

Anyway, I applaud the proponents of Vollgeld for pointing out the dysfunctionalities of our fractional reserve system as well as how questionable it is, ethically, to hand over so much power to a small cabal of financial elites. In fact, I'm quite ecstatic to hear them point out that a nation with a sovereign, free-floating currency does not need to finance deficits through banks -- how very MMT of them. Go OMF!

But their proposed solutions are a fallback to "the market will stabilise itself if left alone, a completely independant central bank will keep the quantity of money in circulation at just the right amount". This hands-off approach resulted in absolute devastation whenever it was applied. They want to turn the state into a regular economic subject that has to adapt to the amount of money currently in circulation. It's (the illusion of) control by technocrats, where you get to disguise policies against the masses as "economic neccessities". Basically the German Eurozone on steroids.

As for the absolute independence of the central bank: you are right, that is not strictly part of the Swiss Vollgeld initiative. But it's what almost every proponent of Vollgeld within the German-speaking circles argues for, including major drivers behind the initiative. Can't let politicians have control over our central bank or else they'll abuse it for populist policies.

They are true believers in technocrat solutions, completely seperate from democratic control.

PS: I cut down my ranting to a minimum of MMT arguments, given that many people see it as just a different sort of voodoo economics.

Edit: Elizabeth Warren's 21st Century Glass Steagal Act strikes me as a rather promising way to solve a great number of problems with the financial industry without going back into the realm of monetarism.

Oh yeah. I still have a couple of VHS tapes of Liquid Television in the garage, including the entire Aeon Flux series they aired. Good times.

remember in the 80's MTV had a show called "liquid television"?
remember aeon flux?
thats peter chung,the animator who made dark fury.
it is a pretty decent short film based on the riddick universe.kinda like animatrix in a way.

...Or, if your car isn't well maintained, you likely have oil and other flammable liquids covering the underside of the motor and maybe the whole car. Of course, if you have no other choice, you have no other choice.

As was mentioned above, the cost of the fuel is a non-starter. Currently SpaceX uses a Kerosene / Liquid Oxygen fuel mix.

After the anomaly (the space industries way of saying accident) in June SpaceX did a complete vehicle review. They are now using a more advanced technique to cool the LOX which means for a denser LOX liquid in their tanks, which ultimately means they have more oxidizer on board for their flights now.

Coupled with the LOX improvements they have made upgrades to the engines which means 30% greater efficiency. Basically the horsepower per engine has increased.

This means they can get their payloads to orbit plus have more then enough fuel left over in stage 1 to return it to land.

The greatest efficiency comes from returning the stage(s) and then reusing them in future launches (not proven yet). ALL launchers (u.s, soviet, indian, ESA, Japan, etc) ditch ALL of their hardware into the ocean when getting payload to orbit. Bye, bye multi million dollars worth of engines and hardware.

If SpaceX can turn that scenario on its head and reuse those stages and MORE importantly the engines they will cut their costs per launch by a substantial amount. Ultimately that means cheaper per pound cost to get material into orbit.

All of the media uses the word "explosion" when describing the June anomaly which is funny because there was never an ignition of onboard fuels.

The LOX tanks have smaller Helium tanks inside them. The helium is released during launch. The helium rises in the LOX quickly, expands and pressurizes the tank to ensure the LOX is "squeezed" into the pipes in order to keep up with the turbo pumps.

One of the struts holding a helium tank inside the LOX tank failed. The helium tank shot up and blew threw the top of the LOX tank and took a good part of the top of the stack off. The engines actually fired for a few seconds after the anomaly and then sputtered out. The rest of the vehicle at this point is still fairly intact.

Without proper structural integrity the vehicle started to veer off course, dynamic pressures built up and the vehicle was essentially ripped apart by those forces.

At 3:20 the Helium tank rips off its struts. At 3:27 the remainder of the vehicle disintegrates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNymhcTtSQ

SpaceX mentioned that in June, the dragon capsule continued to relay telemetry until it smacked into the ocean. If the Dragon had better software onboard it would have detected the anomaly and recovered with chutes. Elon said that software would be active on Dragons from now on.

I'm just guessing, but I'm fairly sure the fuel is a relatively small part of the cost of any space vehicle. Isn't it just liquid hydrogen and oxygen? They wouldn't be using solid fuel for landing, which these days is often some treated rubber or aluminum oxide, so also fairly cheap...

...cheap that is, when compared to just tossing the pressure tanks, pumps, high pressure-high temperature lines, multiple moveable nozzles, mixing/reaction chambers, computers to run it all, redundant safety features, guidance, frame, skin, etc. that make up the fragile vehicle that can't be dropped by parachute or other passive means and still be reusable.

So...I go to John Lewis if I'm an old man who wants to look at little girls through a telescope?


The Man in the Moon had silver shoon
And his beard was of silver thread;
He was girt with pure gold and inaureoled
With gold about his head.
Clad in silken robe in his great white globe
He opened an ivory door
With a crystal key, and in secrecy
He stole o'er a shadowy floor;

Down a filigree stair of spidery hair
He slipped in gleaming haste,
And laughing with glee to be merry and free
He swiftly earthward raced.
He was tired of his pearls and diamond twirls;
Of his pallid minaret
Dizzy and white at its lunar height
In a world of silver set;

And adventured this peril for ruby and beryl
And emerald and sapphire,
And all lustrous gems for new diadems,
Or to blazon his pale attire.
He was lonely too with nothing to do
But to stare at the golden world,
Or to strain at the hum that would distantly come
As it gaily past him whirled;

And at plenilune in his argent moon
He had wearily longed for Fire-
Not the limpid lights of wan selenites,
But a red terrestrial pyre
With impurpurate glows of crimson and rose
And leaping orange tongue;
For great seas of blues and the passionate hues
When a dancing dawn is young;

For the meadowy ways like chrysophrase
By winding Yare and Nen.
How he longed for the mirth of the populous Earth
And the sanguine blood of men;
And coveted song and laughter long
And viands hot and wine,
Eating pearly cakes of light snowflakes
And drinking thin moonshine.

He twinkled his feet as he thought of the meat,
Of the punch and the peppery brew,
Till he tripped unaware on his slanting stair,
And fell like meteors do;
As the whickering sparks in splashing arcs
Of stars blown down like rain
From his laddery path took a foaming bath
In the ocean of Almain;

And began to think, lest he melt and stink,
What in the moon to do,
When a Yarmouth boat found him far afloat,
To the mazement of the crew
Caught in their net all shimmering wet
In a phosphorescent sheen
Of bluey whites and opal lights
And delicate liquid green

With the morning fish — 'twas his regal wish —
They packed him to Norwich town,
To get warm on gin in a Norfolk inn,
And dry his watery gown.
Though St. Peter's knell waked many a bell
In the city's ringing towers
To shout the news of his lunatic cruise
In the early morning hours,

No hearths were laid, not a breakfast made,
And no one would sell him gems;
He found ashes for fire, and his gay desire
For choruses and brave anthems
Met snores instead with all Norfolk abed,
And his round heart nearly broke,
More empty and cold than above of old,
Till he bartered his fairy cloak

With a half waked cook for a kitchen nook,
And his belt of gold for a smile,
And a priceless jewel for a bowl of gruel,
A sample cold and vile
Of the proud plum porridge of Anglian Norwich —
He arrived much too soon
For unusual guests on adventurous quests
From the Mountains of the Moon.