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NPR Talks Skyhooks

Posted by Zonk on from the beyond-the-clouds dept.

David writes "NPR's Talk of the Nation this past week featured Brad Edwards, President of Carbon Designs Inc., to talk about their plans to develop an elevator that would lift people to an object orbiting in outer space. The project's homepage details their plans and ambitions. The discussion expands on callers' concerns about such problems as commercial airliners running into the super long cable or if it would act as a conduit for lightning."

1 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting interview by drgath159 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Covered a lot of the questions that have popped into my head while reading the previous 947 Slashdot/Space-elevator articles.

    Highlights
    - Location? Straight south of California near the equator.
    - Timeframe? 15+ years
    - What if an airliner flew into it? Pretty much screwed. But the location is 400 miles from any air route so shouldn't be a problem.
    - How long would it take to get up? A few hours.
    - Wouldn't it be a huge lightning rod? Yeah, but that area of the world does not have lightning, so shouldn't be a problem.
    - Wouldn't the car that goes up the cable just pull it down and not crawl up it? Yes, but the car is only a few tons and the weight of the cable and weight on the other end was something like a couple thousand tons. So shouldn't be a problem.

    There are a lot of "shouldn't be a problem"'s in there that one of them will be a problem. Exciting technology though.