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Space Elevator Gets FAA Clearance

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the hot-off-the-high-wire dept.

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."

23 of 546 comments (clear)

  1. Wow can you imagine by bryan986 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just imagine the massive migranes you are going to get when you have to listen to musak for some tens of thousands of miles

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    1. Re:Wow can you imagine by Seumas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course, there's a massive waste of time, effort and money in the meantime. And who is to say that by the time this "space elevator" comes around and is usable to launch space vehicles, we won't have developed a more efficient, cheap, powerful fuel to launch shuttles?

      It's like high power computing. Sometimes waiting is the best solution. You could start computing in 1980 with whatever power is available and it could take - what - 30 years for the computing to finish on that power? Or we could wait until 2005, toss a couple of cheap boxes together and achieve the same computing in a few months - coming out ahead of if we had just started in 1980. Saving time, power and money.

      I don't think we'd ever use the elevator. At best, it'd just be a technology that comes and goes without being useful to anyone - except that in the process of creating and building it, we'd probably have acquired some useful degree of scientific discovery and experience that would help with future endeavors in other areas... The question is, will what we gain from it be worth the money invested in it?

    2. Re:Wow can you imagine by JabberWokky · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Rocket fuel is already (relatively) cheap. Even if you come up with a more efficient fuel, you're still screwed with having to lift your fuel tank as you climb and go to mach 25. You're questioning why you might not want to have the vast majority of your launch mass being fuel.

      Increasing computing power is easy, the laws of thermodynamics are a bitch. That's why we have yesterday's supercomputers in most houses, but flying cars don't exist.

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  2. An elevator... by xpeeblix · · Score: 5, Funny

    ..all the way to space.

    What could possibly go wrong?

  3. and she's buying a... by Digitus1337 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Take THAT Led Zeppelin!

  4. Why bother with the FAA? by JediLow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Why bother with the FAA? by kentmartin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh, c'mon - the grandparent here must be bollocks... an unqualified ridiculous statement.

      By that logic, a US citizen, couldn't come to say, the UK, get a CAA issued license and fly with it coz they don't have permission from the FAA?

      I know the Seppo's have been going a bit nuts lately, but, how do you imagine they'd enforce these sort of rules, arrest folks on re-entry into the US? /me hums a song about Cuba.

    2. Re:Why bother with the FAA? by qbwiz · · Score: 5, Informative

      For example, according to Chapter 14 of Federal Regulations Part 47, all trustees of a plane registered in the US must be legal residents or citizens. Since this flight is rather unconventional, something like plane (or balloon + long tether) registration would be required. This isn't just a pilot's license.
      Considering that corporations can't become legal residents (AFAIK, IANAL), whatever country they're incorporated in is where they register their planes. This, of course, assumes a certain universality of laws, but I'm sure the FAA and most other countries have laws in place to ensure that unregistered people don't go flying planes around, even in the middle of the ocean.

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      Ewige Blumenkraft.
    3. Re:Why bother with the FAA? by spitefulcrow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Uh, no? Geosynchronous/geostationary orbit means that the whole thing will rotate at the same speed as the point it's attached to. Besides, think about what you just said. Man-made structures are infinitesimal against the scale of an entire planet. I don't have numbers on it, but rest assured that even a big space station with a tether going all the way down to the surface of the planet would not have anything close to the mass needed to exert any real force against Earth's rotation.

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      Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
  5. I for one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Welcome our heavly lifting space overlords by pressing all the buttons in the elevator before leaving.

    1. Re:I for one... by mOdQuArK! · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why would there need to be more than one button? :-P

  6. A Space Elevator is like perpetual motion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny


    great idea, all we need to do is invent the technology , im not holding my breath

    perhaps the bookies should be taking bets

    Fusion Power
    Space Elevator
    Perpetual Motion
    Duke Nukem Forever
    Microsoft Linux

  7. But..... by Hydraulix · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hate to be the person that gets stuck on the 900,304,564,282,012,373 floor. :(

  8. Thoughts on Space Elevators by treebeard77 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thoughts on Space Elevators by Blaise Gassend has a lot of good info & links on space elevators

  9. Not the first test of the technology, actually by GroeFaZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    FTA:

    marking the first-ever test of this technology in the development of the space elevator concept.

    It may be the first test of the technology that actually requires a federal permit because of the altitude, but here are pictures and a video of an earlier test in November 2004.

    --
    The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
  10. Here we go again.. by Mr2cents · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It could become a terrorist target.

    Sigh, could you please shut up about terrorist threats? What makes a space elevator more a threat than a space shuttle, or a Golden Gate bridge? BTW: space shuttles are full of highly explosive fuels!

    This is a good moment to ask yourself if you're not affected by propaganda too much..

    --
    "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
  11. About linking to sources... by irrision · · Score: 5, Informative

    Does anyone else think that perhaps this article should be linked to the actual source instead of a link to a link that links to another site with a quote from the original source and no link to it? I mean at what point does this become a rumor when it's so far from the original source? Oh here's the link to the companies website: http://www.liftport.com/ And here's one to their staff blog which is much more interesting reading then this quote: http://www.liftport.com/progress/wp/ And heres a link to their september newsletter posted on their forums that talks about the FAA approval among other things: http://www.liftport.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25 3

  12. Bashers out of context by electrosoccertux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you take that section in context instead of just reading it itself, you would find that the problem was not that they built a tower, but their motives for building it. They wanted to get closer to God. Theres nothing wrong with that except for when you do it outside of how he tells us to. He didn't tell us to build a tower to him to get to him, he told us to let him come to us. He was disgusted with the Babylonians because of their pride, not because of their tower building prowess.

    1. Re:Bashers out of context by tooth · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Theres nothing wrong with that except for when you do it outside of how he tells us to.

      Here Adam... here's a big brain... but don't use it! Just trust evrything you are told by those in power.

  13. what about mile high cities? regulations prevent.. by plasmacutter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  14. Space Elevator : 2010 by Xanlexian · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.elevator2010.org/site/ Has TONS of information on this. It is a contest site that has been mentioned here before a few times (I'm too lazy to look up previous articles). All of the materials are currently available to construct one. The movie on the site explains a space elevator in simple terms. I recommend watching it.

    --
    "Congratulations, Boots. Your robot has become self-aware. You're a daddy now." -- Dr. Rho Bowman
  15. I can't wait by nemik · · Score: 5, Funny

    to join the 19741974827320328 mile high club! ;)

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    Blog via SMS text messaging
  16. Oh please... by Gorimek · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was really hoping we could keep the Mac/Windows flame wars out of this discussion for once...