More on Space Elevators

finally writes "Space elevator news is being reported on Space.com and Yahoo. I, for one, am really excited about the project. I was wondering if any of the broad range of talents and skills that we have here have thought of doing a sort of open source assistance to this project by means of donating time and knowledge." We did a big story last week on this space elevator conference.

Comments

You want to donate?

[Spudley]

Let me get this straight... this space elevator initiative is a purely commercial effort. They may be planning to spend billions, but the desired end result will be that they get a near-complete monopoly on space launches(*). ...And you're suggesting donating time to help them?
Hmmmmm....... I think anyone with a budget in eight figures can afford to pay their programmers.

(*) The word "launch" is probably wrong here, but I couldn't think of an alternative.

Re:Jetsons Homes

[Will_Malverson]

The only thing that I can see as negative about this is that driving to work you will see all of these shiny vertical lines above the landscape heading out into the sky...

Nah... The only place you could put one of these would be at the equator, and the tower would be thin enough as to be invisible from more than a mile or two away. Once you get two or three up, and find that you still don't have enough capacity, it probably becomes cheaper to strengthen existing elevators rather than building new ones.

$10 billion is *nothing*!

[GPS Pilot]

This first space elevator could be built for between $7-$10 billion

People, put things in perspective. Since design work began in the early '70s, the U.S. has spent about $180 billion on the Space Shuttle program. What do we have to show for it? Certainly not reliable, low-cost access to space. The space elevator will change everything. Especially considering the fact that you can use it to lift materials for additional space elevators -- making the construction cost for subsequent space elevators lower than for the first one.

$10 billion for our first space elevator would be the bargain of the millenium.

Re:$10 billion is *nothing*!

[FunkMonkey#9]

Since design work began in the early '70s, the U.S. has spent about $180 billion on the Space Shuttle program. What do we have to show for it?

Oh, how about major advances in many areas of science and technology, such as materials science, aerodynamics, propulsion... or were they developed independently of that $180B?

Should anyone working on a Space Elevator work to reinvent the wheel in areas where the amassed body of knowledge has already been covered by other projects? No?

A lot has been taken away from the Space Shuttle program to be applied in other fields, significantly increasing the bang-for-your-buck factor of a lot of things we can take for granted when we start new projects.

Space Elevetor more difficult that reported

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this (http://flightprojects.msfc.nasa.gov/pdf_files/ele vator.pdf) report from NASA of the state of Space Elevetor technology. There are a number of technological problems that must be solved before we can build a space elevator, and I think that given time we will overcome all of them. However, there are two non technological hurdles that must be jumped. The first is space junk. There are more than 8700 pieces of 10mm+ sixed space junk. All of them are a threat to the safety of the space elevator and most need to be cleaned up before we deploy a space elevetor. The other big hurdle is politics. Not many people are going to be keen on the idea of having 20 tons of cable deangling above their heads. If the space elevator snaps at the right (that is wrong) place then you'll have 22,000 miles of cable tumbling out of space. Also, it will have to be an international effor with some heavy duty security requirements. All that has to be sorted out before construction begins.

I personaly would love to see a space elevator in operation in time for me to actualy take a ride. But I persoanly think the 15 years mentioned is too optimistic.