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When people think about building things with carbon nanotubes or with carbon nanotube enhanced materials they need to know that there is not much production of carbon nanotubes. There is less than 1000 tons/year of carbon nanotubes being produced and most of that is in a form that is like an unsorted powder. The material that has been woven into threads or sheets will soon be tens of tons per year and that macro scale material is not as strong at the macroscale. The cost of material increases as you require higher purity or a particular form of it.

Even material like Kevlar and regular carbon fiber is produced at the 10,000 ton to 100,000 ton per year level. Global raw steel is produced at about 1.2 billion tons per year and cement is at 2.6 billion tons per year.

There are many different kinds of steel and concrete. There is superstrong geopolymer concrete. Regular concrete can take 1500-5000 pounds per square inch but there is believed to be super-concrete that can withstand 50,000 pounds per square inch.

Fiber reinforced concrete using regular carbon fibers is advancing with long carbon fibers that are 500+ times better at resisting cracking and able to be 40% lighter.

CNAno Technologies 500 ton/year factory has received ISO 9001 certification.

Carbon nanotube nanostitching can reinforce sheets of material and reinforce existing materials at their weakest point for airplane skins and other applications.