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Space Elevator Company Fission

Posted by Hemos on from the splitting-into-multi-lanes dept.

Dag Maggot writes "Highlift Systems seems to be going through some turbulent times with cofounder Michael Laine leaving to form his own space elevator company LiftPort. Interestingly, Liftport pledges to be a "transparent" company, and as such have provided the full text of the original space elevator proposal which was made to NASA NIAC." We mentioned Liftport before, but the proposal is new and quite interesting.

8 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. I hope this takes off... by epicstruggle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Because, id like to see an alternative to storing nuclear waste underground (too much controversy and NIMN(not in my neighborhood)). We could safely lift the material up into space and then launch the waste somewhere else. This is still many years aways, but I hope they get some good funding to do their research, and build some test platforms.

    later,

    --
    "Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
    1. Re:I hope this takes off... by tankdilla · · Score: 2, Interesting

      We could safely lift the material up into space and then launch the waste somewhere else.

      That is a good idea. But what if something were to go wrong, and somehow radioactive goo starts leaking a mile above the Earth. Then the wind starts spreading it all over the place, and we all end up with mutant powers or three-headed pigeons or ***Insert imagination here***. Or an entire region could smell like a garbage can. But if they can find a safe way to do it that would be great.

      --

      -Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow

  2. Re:..yet another tax shelter poisons the beanstalk by Raumkraut · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Nuclear power has come a long way since the first commercial reactors, and especially Chernobyl. Unfortunately I don't think the general public has been told.

    Either way, Liftport has been talking about holding a competition at a Robotics convention (or summert, I forget) for making ribbon-climbing robots. In the rules of said competition, the entries get extra points for a remote, wireless power source for the climber.
    This struck me as slightly odd, and likely unfeasable on the grand scale, but an interesting developmental path...

  3. Re:Promising by wfmcwalter · · Score: 2, Interesting
    It's not fiction, per se, as the fundamental physics is sound. Liftport saying it could be finished within a decade from now is plain silly. Every part of the endeavour entails inventing most of the necessary technology as you go.

    As to falling down, there's good news and there's bad. The counterweight, counterstrand, and the geostationary terminus will stay up. If the terrestrial strand were to break, the worst case would probably be at a fairly high altitude, wrapping itself around the planet as you suggest (for the record, it's rather less than one equatorial circumference long). Now, the elevator's proponents will tell you that the carbon nanofibres that compose the terrestrial strand will break up due to atmospheric fiction heating them until they turn back into elemental carbon (a nice graphitic rain) and/or CO and CO2. This may be untrue - it's quite possible that the cable will disintegrate unto small nanotube fragments, which will be aerostatic at a variety of altitutes (aerostatic means they stay at much the same altitude without expending energy, the way pollen and safeway carrier bags do). So it's very possible that tons of aerostatic but chemically intact nanotubes will rain to earth over the year or so following the cable's failure. One recent study indicates that inhalation of nanotubes is extremely harmful to the lung (causing significant auto-immune scarring of the tissue surrounding the locii at which the nanotubes land).

    --
    ## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
  4. On topic post by 16977 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe I'm missing the point, but why does anybody give this article any credibility whatsoever? If you look at the slashdot article, they act like this is a legitimate company with a realistic goal. But what kind of company puts animated GIFs of a "space elevator" on their home page and supports their idea with citations from science fiction novels? They tell us this has been considered by NASA. But so has the Podkletnov effect, which supposedly miraculously shields objects from earth's gravity. Either NASA isn't given enough funding to do background checks, or they're checking out every crackpot who comes along in hopes of finding gold. I'm betting this is a hoax, but if it isn't, this guy has about as much chance of constructing his space elevator as Imari Stevenson has of designing a Final Fantasy sequel. A word to the wise.

  5. Re:RTFFAQP by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No, less than a twentieth of a trillion. Read their FAQ before posting here.

    Hey, that's less than half of what we spent on GulfWar II! And there'd probably be more lasting benefit to one of these.

    --
    "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
  6. Slashdot needs to... by DannyiMac · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Slashdot needs to make a space elevator thread... people keep talking more and more about it and it's becoming more and more possible to build...

    --
    - Danny
  7. Spinnin' by Plowd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I haven't seen anything about the effect this would have on the Earths rotation. To continue with their analogy of a ball on a string, the weight moving OUT in the string slows the speed of rotation. Conversely, as a weight is brought closer to the Earth it would increase the speed of rotation. AND, if onle 1 elevator went up wouldn't it change the balance of the rotation?