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Going Up?

Posted by michael on from the keep-arms-inside-the-car dept.

jmiyaku writes "The National Post is reporting that NASA has given a Seattle company a $570,000 grant to continue its investigation into constructing a space elevator. Coupled with some production-grade technology from a Japanese car company (carbon nanotube composites), this elevator could be a reality within 15 years..." The Highlift website has some more information.

2 of 515 comments (clear)

  1. People need to read the FAQ... by agilen · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.highliftsystems.com/faq.html

    This talks about what will happen if it falls, what terrorists can do to it, etc. It actually seems fairly honestly done, not all marketing-speak.

  2. Re:Good idea for nuclear waste? by f00Dave · · Score: 5, Informative

    The energy required to actually launch something 'into the Sun' from Earth is enormous. The Earth's orbital velocity is around 30 km/s, or 108000 km/h (~64800 mph). That's a LOT of delta-V to get rid of! I'll leave the details to the science geeks, but even with a gravitational slingshot (say off Venus), you're not gonna kill all that speed without entering atmosphere. The alternative would be to haul shit up to the graviational midpoint then let it slide along the shaft, accellerating and getting whipped off at 1G at the end of it, aiming it to smack into Jupiter or something, instead. ;-)

    That whole 'spiraling into the sun' thing bugs me.

    http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/e ar thfact.html

    --
    .f00Dave