When I worked in Re-entry and Rocket Motor materials, the emphasis was mostly on various available advanced (and old) carbon/graphite materials.
"Experts" in these carbon materials would include many disciplines, including Mechanical Engineers who were only modest converts to atomic theory, needing to be weaned from Continuum Theories of matter.
Somehow, the Defense and NASA "Carbon Experts" had convinced themselves that carbons and graphites were so unique that they were a universe of their own particualr sciences.
"Experts" sometimes were those who compiled data or fabricated materials, but who never seriously thought of placing these "Highly Unique" carbon/graphite materials into the logical spectrum of other materials.
One of my favorite questions to ask some "Experts" went like the following.
I would show them a plot of the melting point versus the Elastic Modulus (Young's) and they could see that the high melting point materials had high elastic modulii. I wa careful to put Diamond on the chart, using the triple point as a substitute for the lack of atmospheric pressure melting poing.
Then I would show them the elastic moduli of Pyrolytic Graphite and of the Graphite Crystal. The "C" axis would show up with this incredibly low elastic modulus..... which is of course the macroscopic manifestation of the weak vad der Waals bonding in that direction.
Then I would ask them "How is it that this weakly bonded material has such a high melting point?"
Generally, the result was a rambling mumble or silence.
Sometimes I would also throw in a graph of thermal expansion coefficient versus melting point..... and the low thermal expansion materials would have high melting point.
Then there would sometimes be the inverse correlation of melting point and elastic modulus..... (stiff materials would generally be low thermal expansion, such as Tungsten versus high expansion low melting materials such as Aluminum),
I hid from these discussions the critical data trend of melting point of various organic materials versus linearity/planarity and "molecular weight".
It was interesting that the "Experts" in the carbon/graphite materials had insulated themselves from materials science and chemistry.
Fullerenes, Buckytubes and Graphene did not, evidently, originate from the community of carbon and graphite "Experts".
Could be wrong.
Jim