Thoughts on the Space Elevator

Keith Curtis writes to tell us that Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit fame, has posted his thoughts on why NASA should be building a space elevator instead or their current plans. Keith has also posted his throughts from an engineer's perspective (although admittadly still not a rocket scientist). "The challenges are many, but it has been a viable option since carbon nanotubes, structures so strong that one the width of a human hair could lift a car, were invented. A space elevator could be between 10 and 2000 times cheaper than conventional technology and will force NASA to change just about everything they do. Hopefully one day that bureaucracy will wake up and realize it."

Comments

Yes and No

[JaredOfEuropa]

The space elevator seems to be still hovering at that point where it certainly looks to be theoretically feasible, but where no one really has a clear path towards bringing this construct about in reality. (Or is it that there are still a few people laughing at the idea, if you know what I mean?). It seems to me that it would be foolish for NASA to abandon its current plans in favour of this unproven idea, yet it might be wise to throw some money and effort at it.

It would cost about $6 billion in today's dollars just to complete the structure itself, according to my study

I've heard a similar figure before, and it's amazingly cheap if you think about it. We, as a silly small country, have blown close to this amount on a couple of utterly useless railroad lines. If we could have had a working space elevator instead...

Re:It may be more cost effective technically..

[Tango42]

Actually, it's more than Geosynchronous - the centre of gravity needs to be at GS (or near it, the fact that it's joined to the ground might have an effect), so it has to go past it by an amount depending on the mass of the counterweight.

Re:Pixiedust

[AKAImBatman]

Parent is not a troll. He's trying to make a point. The Space Elevator is a untested and unproven technology. Like all unproven technologies, there are bound to be hidden costs, hidden delays, and hidden engineering problems.

NASA is taking the correct approach. They are building something that they *know* works first. They can then work out the pixie dust^H^H space elevator next.

Re:Pixiedust

[BJZQ8]

I agree completely. We've done the moon thing, and have tons of cool rocks. Why do it again? What will that $100 billion do for us that hasn't been done before? It would be much better spent researching and developing something like a 36,000-km nanotube ribbon than going up and getting more rocks. Even if the ribbon proves unproduceable, we would be investing in basic research, and not simply lining the pockets of the US space industry, ie Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, etc. to do something that has been done before.

Re:frick n frack

[multiplexo]

the problem is, tactically, a frickin space elevator is really hard to defend.

think sept. 11

Bullshit, 9/11 happened because it was a one off, it's unlikely to happen again because who is going to believe highjackers who tell you that you'll be all right if you cooperate and don't resist. That's not likely to happen again. Also you can set up a no-fly zone for 100 miles or so around the elevator and enforce it with a couple of Patriot missile batteries for distance work and Vulcan cannons for close in work. We have bunches and bunches of people in all four services thinking about ways of improving "if it flies, it dies" technology and they'd love a chance to try out their stuff.