Just a note that even if falling short of room temperature, liquid nitrogen (77 K) is a lot cheaper and easier to work with than helium, and is not a scarce resource. A lot of useful technologies would open up if we get past the 77 K threshold, at manageable pressure.
huh? we have LN2 temperature superconductors. In this clip I show flux pinning in YBCO, cooled by LN2 on my dining room table: http://nt4tn.net/random/superconductor.mp4
There are many limits in current HTS-- like it's hard to build coils out of brittle ceramics-- so having alternatives would be very useful, so perhaps that's what you meant?
Is ductile HTS a major research target too, or even believed to be possible? Or is the hope that by studying RTS' we'll stumble into something that can be manufactured by chance or gain some deeper understanding of their behavior that let us design more useful materials? It seems the media spills the most ink on room temp but I agree than LN2 temp but able to be formed would be more important-- I think if YBCO worked at -70C it still would not see that much commercial use.
