Notes From 3rd Annual Space Elevator Conference

colonist writes "The Space Elevator: 3rd Annual International Conference was held recently. Blaise Gassend, a PhD student at MIT, took notes. The main obstacle is still the material: transferring the strength of the nanotube to the ribbon. Other topics include: the nanotube tether Centennial Challenge; Elevator 2010, a challenge for a 250 kg climber to climb a 16 km tether; objections and refinements to Bradley Edwards' design; non-equatorial space elevators; replacing the term 'space elevator' with 'space bridge'; testing the space elevator material on cable cars; science; defense and economics."

Comments

Playing too much Civilisation

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

How on earth are they going to cope with the wind forces, the jetstream, gravity, the earths spin, earpopping, in transit entertainment, lightning, costs, kids, aliens, terrorism and the fact that their's nothing in space to go up to yet.

P.S.
EMACS already does this.

Unfortunately

[Timesprout]

The space elevator is a great idea but no human has the mental strength to listen to elevator musak for the length of time the trip will require and still retain their sanity.

Re:Unfortunately

[monkey_jam]

not to mention the pure embarassement of trying to hold a fart in for the entire 4 day journey

I dont think i'm man enough for that task.......

Re:Unfortunately

[AndroidCat]

Ha! Do you think Earth orbit will be far enough to escape the enforcers of the RIAA?

Re:Tower of babel.

[Big Nothing]

Ursäkta, men jag fattar INTE vad du säger?

Re:Incredible idea

[manavendra]

...Imagine a huge mofo ribbon going straight up as far as you can see and imagine...

And that, my friend, is a real phallic symbol :-)

Nasa reports research funds for Space Bridge

[falsemover]

According to new Nasa research http://www.nasa.gov/news/highlights/index.html they can fully fund a new US$2 billion research project by selling the franchise to the revolving restaurant at the top and logo placement along the length of the ribbon itself. Already, they have received competitive bids from Chez Panisse, McDonalds, and Bert Farnsdale's New York hotdog stand. This is the start of the holy mothership of bidding wars.

Re:Practical problems to sort out first

[m1chael]

Why don't they just genetically engineer giant spiders that also have high IQs. That way they can spin the bridge and kill all humans!

Space bridge?

[Will_Malverson]

We can't change its name to be a 'space bridge'. If we did, we couldn't have the same hilarious jokes in every Slashdot article about elevator music.

Won't somebody please think of the hilarious Slashdot jokes?

Re:Only..

[bairy]

Should hope so. If Microsoft ran it, you'd see the blue sky of death far too often

Lift Music

[BigBadBus]

Lets hope they don't play music like "The Girl from Ipanema" in that darned elevator ;)

More catchier

[ajlitt]

In the effort to increase public comprehension of this concept, I offer up "space yo-yo".

This is a moot point!

[Tibor the Hun]

The sailor's rule only applies when the rope is hanging down, it has to support its own' weight, yadda, yadda, yadda...

But, you see, this rope will be hanging "up" so to speak, and therefore conveniently bypassing any such rule. If my calculations are correct, since this rope is going in the negative direction, its strength will increase, rather than diminish, by orders of magnitude!

Re:Incredible idea

[gwalla]

Only if your phallus is less than one millimeter in diameter and stretches for miles.

Re:Sadly, Too big a Terrorist Target.

[mwood]

Don't forget the really big rocket you need to attach to the kitchen sink in order to kill nearly all of its momentum so it doesn't just sit there in orbit with you making you look really foolish.

Quite the deal

[jaghatarjankare]

Conferences like these always give me a lift.