Notes From 3rd Annual Space Elevator Conference

Posted by timothy on Monday July 5, 2004 @10:01PM from the don't-let-dennis-hopper-near-it dept.

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."

2 of 469 comments (clear)

Tower of babel. by zushiba · 2004-07-05 22:11 · Score: 0, Troll

Yeah humans tried this once before and look what happened.
1. Re:Tower of babel. by meringuoid · 2004-07-05 23:28 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Tower of Babel? Whats that?
  An old Bronze Age story - basically a Just-So story explaining why there are different languages. Seems that all the people of the world used to get along together in perfect harmony, and they decided to build a tower that would reach to heaven. God did not like this, and scrambled everyone's languages so that they couldn't understand each other and spent the rest of history fighting instead of cooperating.
  Nice guy.
  
  --
  Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.