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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."
Christ, why does everything we ever dream of nowadays have to consider terrorism as an influencing factor? What is this obsession with living in fear all the time? Have we been so indoctrinated that we now automatically think in these terms? I say screw the "terrorists" whoever they may be. Perhaps if we spent more time dreaming and less time trying to fight fear with fists we'd be a lot better off anyways...
And don't forget it'd be a tremendous icon of Western achievement. You'd better believe everyone in the US, or whatever country eventually builds one, would be proud as hell of it. The media would be going on and on about how it'll usher in a new age for mankind, and so on, and so forth. If terrorists could somehow take it out, wouldn't that have tremendous psychological value? Remember that they chose the World Trade Center and Pentagon to strike at us, two (or three) buildings that symbolized, to them, everything that's wrong with the US. Wouldn't a tower that reaches into the heavens (hello, Tower of Babel?) symbolize that even more?
It's quite reasonable to take terrorism into consideration when designing a structure. As long as you don't let it make the decision for you. Saying "We'll increase the no-fly zone from five miles to twenty five to give us time to shoot down hijacked planes" is good planning. Saying "We just can't eliminate the possibility of terrorism, let's just not build a space elevator" is not.
Actually, it wasn't. My first thought was, "cool", but hey...
What really irritates me is that this fear of terrorism is so unreasonable. It's almost akin to the "Won't someone think of the children scenario". The US has been the target of relatively few domestic attacks and of those, one was carried out by a US citizen. Despite this, the fear of terrorism has pervaded the national consciousness so fundamentally that any discussion is now subject to these apocalyptic "what if?" scenarios.
Yes it would be a very bad thing (tm) if someone crashed an airliner into a space elevator, but when that progresses from being a notable, if incredibly unlikely concern, to a point where such fear of the irrational drives society itself, then who cares what the "terrorists" do, they've already won. Of course we should build with the lunatic with a cause in mind, but build we must. This realisation is slowly being eroded. There is a phoenix risen from the ashes of 9/11 filled with hatred and fear, and it is a frightening beast indeed.
Europe has had to live with this for far longer than the US, yet they live in a far freer, far more secure environment than we could ever hope to have. I re-iterate, screw the terrorists. It's the only way we all win.