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Space Elevator Going Up

Posted by michael on from the penthouse-suite dept.

Adlopa writes "The Guardian newspaper reports on scientists' efforts to realise the space elevator, as first described by Arthur C Clarke in his 1979 novel 'Fountains of Paradise'. Advances in materials science mean that 'a cable reaching up as far as 100,000km from the surface of the Earth' is no longer an impossibility and 70 scientists and engineers are discussing the idea at a conference in Santa Fe today."

4 of 684 comments (clear)

  1. harnessing the public interest by mblase · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One unlikely problem could be capturing the public's imagination. "When we actually start launching this it's going to be kind of boring," Dr Edwards said. "There's no smoke, there's no pillars of fire and there's no loud rumbling noises. There's just this thing that slowly ascends the ribbon into space."

    This problem would be neatly solved once the initial expense of the elevator was recouped. At this point it would be much cheaper to send objects into orbit, including people... ride up the chain, get on a space suit, get out on your own nanotube cable and float around 36,000 km above the earth without ever needing to learn how to help fly a space shuttle.

    I foresee an enormous tourist interest, to the point that someday several elevators will be sent up exclusively for tourists to use.

  2. What about the static electricity it will generate by pair-a-noyd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nasa played around with dragging wires through the atmosphere to generate static electricity.

    This thing will could possibly generate HUGE amounts of SE as the atmosphere whizzes past it 24/7. Are there plans to capture and use this electricity or what??

  3. Defending a one meter wide cable below 60,000 feet by jerryasher · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the article.... "The biggest technical obstacle is finding a material strong but light enough to make the cable; this is where the carbon nanotubes come in. These are microscopically thin tubes of carbon that are as strong as diamonds but flexible enough to turn into fibre. In theory, a nanotube ribbon about one metre wide and as thin as paper could support a space elevator."

    I know the fiber is as strong as diamonds, and I understand that along it's 100,000 km length it's flexible enough to dodge objects.

    But how will they protect it from, well, planes at altitudes below 100,000 feet?

  4. Re:Looks like the pointy haired boss at work again by EpsCylonB · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well maybe China's plans to take up residence on the moon will motivate american politicians to take space seriously again.