The Past and Future of Carbon Fiber

Carbon fiber is crucial to both the development of many current products, from golf clubs to jackets, and has the potential to be a crucial material in mankind's quest to become interplanetary.

With a history that starts with its use as filament in Thomas Edison's lightbulbs, carbon fiber has been "cutting edge" since the 1870s. But it's not just hype; the way carbon fiber has been used has changed throughout the decades, giving it fresh appeal. Various developments in production from companies like Houston's Union Carbide and Japan's Toray Industries have changed the way carbon fiber was built and used in day-to-day products.

Throughout the years, good press has helped keep carbon fiber in the spotlight. In 1972, American golfer Gay Brewer won the first annual Taiheiyo Club Masters in Japan, and his win was widely credited to his use of golf clubs made out of carbon fiber shafts, sparking a rush on similar products. Carbon fiber was viewed suspiciously by some in Formula 1 racing as being too weak to withstand a crash, but a 1981 accident where a driver walked in a carbon-fiber car walked away showed the world that the material could take a hit.

Last year, SpaceX announced that it had developed a 40-foot carbon tank crucial to its efforts in getting to Mars. But the material is also tricky, as evidenced by how a carbon fiber liner played into SpaceX's Falcon 9 explosion. The material's wide variety of uses through the centuries has come from the basic idea of information sharing. Hopefully, as more is learned about SpaceX has done right and wrong with carbon fiber, the next generation will be even stronger.