Living on Mars?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Do you know if the tensile strength of carbon nanotube fiber twisted into helices, much like rope or metal wire, has been tested? If so, how much stronger is that arrangement when compared to straight fibers?

I think the point of twisted rope is more about getting the strands interconnected. If you have a long rope of a hundred strands, and each strand is broken, but each one in a different spot, the rope still has 99% of its original strength, while just a bundle of straight fibers would have been completely severed by that point. Something as tiny as carbon nanotubes, which we probably can't make long enough to individually go all the way up to geosynchronous orbit anyway, would most likely benefit quite a lot from some sort of twisting/braiding/webbing.