Calling the Space Elevator

CornfedPig writes "SPACE.com has an article that suggests building an elevator to a 100,000 km-high penthouse could be possible within the next few years at a cost of about $5B US. Widespread availability of low-cost carbon nanotubes appears to be the gating factor. Existence of such an elevator could drop the cost of lifting things (satellites, people, CowboyNeal) into orbit to a couple of hundred dollars a pound. Anyone remember Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise?" Space elevator stories come along every few months; we never seem to be getting any closer to actually doing it. I imagine it will happen at some point in my lifetime, but...

Comments

There's a reason we don't build them

[PhysicsGenius]

Space elevators are a pie in the sky (or is that knife in the sky?) idea that won't work.

Remember what is required, first. The thing has to come reasonably close to the ground in order to be useful. And the center of mass has to be at geosynchronous orbit height, 100 km up. That's a huge amount of mass spread over a very large area. This incurs several problems:

• Tidal forces of the Earth on the structure call for superstrong material. Side tidal forces from the moon require it to be flexible as well.
• How do you build it? Not in place...
• Imagine that thing towering over your neighborhood. Pretty scary. Now realize that it is going to be visible from much of the Earth's surface and add NIMBY into the equation.
• The voltage potential from top to bottom is going to make this thing deadly deadly deadly without ultra-secure precautions.