NPR Talks Skyhooks

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."

Comments

The next x-prize

[maelstrom]

Here is some money that NASA could "invest" in another x-prize like compitition. Get some innovation back into the space game. Maybe once China starts blasting some people towards Mars the US will get off its ass again.

Re:Interesting interview

[MrResistor]

There is no such thing as a place in the world that doesn't have lightning. That's just stupid.

Besides, there doesn't need to be lighting for electricity to be an issue. You can generate electricity by moving a conductor through a magnetic field. I would think 62k miles of carbon nanotube ribbon running through the magnetic field of the earth would make a pretty good generator.

IIRC, they already have to deal with this when tethering satalites to the space shuttle. I remember hearing that every material they've tried has some length at which it generates enough power to burn itself up (though that length might be several miles).