Space Elevator Gets FAA Clearance

lonesome phreak writes "Techzonez has a short piece about the recent FAA waiver received by the LiftPort Group allowing them to conduct preliminary tests or their high altitude robotic lifters. The lifters are early prototypes of the technology that the company is developing for use in its commercial space elevator to ferry cargo back and forth into space."

Comments

Why bother with the FAA?

[JediLow]

Wouldn't it be best to launch from somewhere outside the United States - say from the equator? It just makes more sense to me if they used something like Sea Launch.

Re:Why bother with the FAA?

[qbwiz]

If you're a US citizen/company, you still need FAA approval, no matter where in the world you're launching from. No, I don't know why.

Another sci-fi idea coming true?

[aktzin]

Maybe Sir Arthur will live to see parts of "The fountains of paradise" coming true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountains_of_Paradise

Tower of Babel

[88NoSoup4U88]

When I read about those space elevators, I somehow always have to think about the Tower of Babel (and I'm not even religious) :

From Gen 11:1-9

1. Now the entire earth was of one language and uniform words.
2. And it came to pass when they traveled from the east, that they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly"; so the bricks were to them for stones, and the clay was to them for mortar.
4. And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered upon the face of the entire earth."
5. And the Lord descended to see the city and the tower that the sons of man had built.
6. And the Lord said, "Lo! [they are] one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do?
7. Come, let us descend and confuse their language, so that one will not understand the language of his companion."
8. And the Lord scattered them from there upon the face of the entire earth, and they ceased building the city.
9. Therefore, He named it Babel, for there the Lord confused the language of the entire earth, and from there the Lord scattered them upon the face of the entire earth.

So let's hope Liftport Group has their translators ready ;)

Re:Tower of Babel

[aussie_a]

Son of a bitch! What sort of asshole would do something that like? "Oh look, there's some people acting peacefully in a joint operation. Well I better fix their little red wagon! Haha! They'll surely worship me after this."

If there is a Christian god, he is a DICK! The only person whose more of a dick then him, is superman.

Re:Simple tests, not actual elevator

[QuantumG]

Optimally from a technical point of view. Definitely not from a political point of view.

Terrorism? maybe - Space junk? hell yes

[calidoscope]

The biggest problems are keeping it together, and keeping it protected from harm, like accidently hitting it in a plane, or lightning strikes. It could become a terrorist target.

What just about everybody forgets about the spece elevator is that every orbit lower than geosynchronous will eventually intersect the elevator (assuming the elevator is anchored on the equator). A particle too small to track from earth can still have quite an impact.

One possible solution would be a much better tracking system combined with some method for deflecting/destroying objects that come too close.

AstroNautical

[Doc Ruby]

I want to see the US build a "skyhook" space elevator on the Equator right off Jarvis Island. Jarvis could house the cargo/control center. Nearby Kiribati could become an (inter)global shipping hub. And Hawaii would be even spacier than it is now.

Hold it up or tie it down?

[Nerdposeur]

In "Rainbow Mars," Larry Niven (who also wrote Ringworld, seemingly the basis of Halo's ring-shaped planet) imagined "world trees" that grow downward from space and attach to a pre-grown stalk on a planet.

The world-trees were huge, but rather than supporting their weight traditionally, the roots were designed to hold them in the ground, as opposed to being flung out into space.

I guess if you had a space elevator and stuck enough mass out into space, it could take some of the supportive strain off the base of it with centrifugal pull. I'm not sure how the strain would work out on it.

At first I imagined an elevator box where you open it and push your cargo (a rocket, whatever) out, but I guess it makes more sense to let it accelerate and sling it off the end with centrifugal force, like... like a sling. No fuel required to get moving.

what about mile high cities? regulations prevent..

[plasmacutter]

Current regulations (faa i think) prevent mile high cities.

Already there are conglomerates in tokyo with plans and long term roadmaps laid out toward the construction of self contained mile high towers.. (one shaped like nested bowls actually has 7 or so large open air parks contained within.

The US will never have one as long as these regulations continue to pose even a slight threat to what is already a daunting task in both engineering and financing.

Truth be told.. i want to live in one of these towers before i'm middle aged, so get moving with the restriction removal!

Re:Obligatory Comments

[Stinking Pig]

Kim Stanley Robinson (_Red Mars_) had an elegant solution to this problem... use a robot factory to push a carbon-rich asteroid into position, then spin cable down from it. The non-carbon mass of the asteroid remains to provide counterweight (and structural support for a space station, which is a handy thing to have at the end of a space elevator.

Still a chicken placed before the egg if considered with today's technology, but it's more feasible and practical than "build all the cable on earth and lift it into space, so we can lift heavy things into space".