I wish it didn't have citric acid after reading the article ghostice shared but I can say it kept me from feeling like crap after several days with no food. In what manner do you observe that it is highly effective?
That surely is a personal thing. My foot is almost exactly the shape of the original Vibram FiveFingers except that my fourth toe is a little short. I was very happy with the discontinued Altra King MT for hiking.
Barefoot is a silly marketing term that is applied to a wide range sole thickness and stiffness. I'll use minimalist instead, and the 16mm stack height the Outlander sole is a lot less minimal than for example the 6.5mm stack of a Merrell Vapor Glove. Maybe it could work?
In what practical application would rope fibers be under axial compression at working load as implied by your graphic referring to total strength? Surely some fibers are under greater tension than others but does that gradient cross into compression except at light loads?
As I recall from informal study wood is an anisotropic composite material with the primary strength coming from lignin "straws" that are more weakly bound together by cellulose. As such it is only strong in one axis and it is susceptible to microstructure buckling, delamination/separation, and...
I guess it could be wound up again first. Is that the only reason? moss' definitive statement alludes to something else.
None of that is practical and defeats any simplicity of the vacuum cannon concept for this. It's just theory.
I believe Nylon has greater toughness than polyester so different jargon would be helpful here. Perhaps you are describing constructional elongation or hysteresis.