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

Musak

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but who wants to listen to that god awful music?

Re:Musak

[Crash McBang]

You get used to it after the first 5,000 floors...

Re:Musak

[fermion]

not to mention the movie and safety talk. I think Red Dwarf said it best

Welcome to Xpress Lifts, descent to floor sixteen. You will be going down two thousand, five hundred and sixty-seven floors and, for a small extra charge, you can enjoy the in-lift movie 'Gone With the Wind'. If you look to your right and to your left, you will notice there are no exits. In the highly unlikely event of the lift having to make a crash-landing, death is certain. Under your seats you will find a cassette for recording your last-minute testament, and from above your head a bag will drop containing sedatives and cyanide capsules.

I would think the biggest issue would be safety. Two shuttle breakups in 15 some odd years is bad enough, but what will be required when we really have the promised trip to space every week.

Re:Musak

[ThePromenader]

Your post is a funny : )

But ah beg to diffah. To be honest I can't think of anything safer than an elevator for 'point-to-point' space travel. If we can make a hair-thin cable strong enough to lift a car, imagine what weight a thousand of those strung together - say in five separate cables (not unlike today's elevators) - can assure. The cable's heaviest load, though, would be itself, and that towards its centre where Earth's gravity and the cable's own extra-gravitational circumferential pull meet up. Not to mention the additional stress caused by the cable's movements around its earth-fixed tether. But I'm sure that it's more than managable. <br/><br/>

Another plus would be the long-term costs - Once built a space elevator would cost its maintenance and the energy to get it up there - yes there are other costs but I'm sure you all get the picture. In fact, who says we have to get up there <i>quickly</i>? For humans to get up to that orbital satellite-maintenance station, sure, but what about the satellites themselves? These could use "slower" energy - and why not solar power - to take their sweet time getting up there. Things would speed up towards the top anyways. We already have freight elevators, don't we?

Pixiedust

[prurientknave]

If magic pixie dust were invented it would be such a waste to spend all this money on conventional boosters. Come on NASA! Drop what's known to work and concentrate on the pixie dust formula.

Re:Pixiedust

[Bryansix]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixie_dust
It already exists. Just not for what you are thinking about using it for. IBM owns the patent on Pixie Dust. Although I can't see that they care about it anymore now that they sold thier hard drive division.

Re:Pixiedust

[An Onerous Coward]

I once read an interesting article on cluster computing, which basically said that the fastest and cheapest way to solve any truly big computational problem was, "Wait a few years before buying the cluster." Given the rates at which prices for storage, processing, and networking were plummeting, a problem that would take eight years to solve today could be solvable in four years two years out, and in two years two years from now. So by putting it off for two years, you'd shave two years off the project.

The current plan doesn't get us to the moon until 2018 anyways, and without a cheap way to keep things flowing between here and the moon, the chance of a sustained human presence is nil. So we could spend $100B building basically the same propulsion-based solutions we've always been building, or we could spend a much smaller sum on fundamental materials research.

I don't see it as a gamble, because without a drastically cheaper way to get into space, we'll just retrace the journeys of the Apollo missions. Then the whole nation will kick back, pop open a beer, mutter "Yep, still got it," and wait to do it all over again in 2050.

Count me in with the pixie dusters.

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

[Asterixian]

Given the rates at which prices for storage, processing, and networking were plummeting, a problem that would take eight years to solve today could be solvable in four years two years out, and in two years two years from now. So by putting it off for two years, you'd shave two years off the project.

This may be true in the everyday world of cut-throat competition, but if we call this "optimal" and everybody does it, everybody waits two years, and nobody puts forth the effort to realize the gain in productivity. Leeching off of technology that hasn't been invented yet reaps the benefits of work paid for by whomever goes first. I call it a technologically-oriented game of chicken.

Looking more closely at NASA's past projects, you will find that NASA takes precisely that role - the government puts up huge sums of money on an unproven technology, and the world reaps the benefits years (or decades) later. From the taxpayer's perspective, the only important criterion is whether the indirect reward will pay back the taxpayer for the up-front costs.

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:Pixiedust

[nwbvt]

" 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."

Why? Whats the hurry? Would it really be the end of the world if we didn't get back to the Moon by 2020? Is this a critical mission whose failure would jeopardize national security?

No, its a 100 billion dollar PR stunt. The best argument you can make for it is that in the process we are developing new technologies and discovering new ideas, but in that case wouldn't it make more sense to go with the new untested but potentially revolutionary technology than what is effectively the same thing we used 36 years ago? Doesn't going with what you know works completely defeat the point?

Re:Pixiedust

[TallDave]

There isn't even really that much basic materials work that needs to be done. They just need to get the composite percentage up (iirc) from around 10% to around 50%. I think the success of carbon nanotube companies and SpaceShipOne suggests the best way to do this is for NASA to offer large monetary rewards, perhaps in the range of $10 - $100M, for producing a workable cable and climber power source. My understanding is those two things are the major engineering hurdles right now. Currently there is a NASA-sponsored climber competition, which I believe has a 400K reward.

It may be more cost effective technically..

[thedak]

But, I don't remember ever hearing that we actually have the technology to produce enough carbon nanotube material to actually build a prototype device of some sort let alone a cable spanning to LEO. I realize it's 14 years away.. but there's no guarentee we will actually have the capacity by that time. As far as I'm concerned we're better off building what can actually be finished come 2020 let alone tested and on our way to the moon.. again..

Re:It may be more cost effective technically..

[ArbitraryConstant]

"But, I don't remember ever hearing that we actually have the technology to produce enough carbon nanotube material to actually build a prototype device of some sort let alone a cable spanning to LEO."

A space elevator must extend to geosynchronous orbit, 36000 km up.

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:It may be more cost effective technically..

[Rei]

Liftport is testing weak ribbons. The sort of ribbons they want simply do not exist. It's unobtanium.

I don't know why I have to post this information on each space elevator thread (you'd think people would have gotten it down by now), but here we go again. The strongest measured SWNTs thusfar are just over 60GPa; most were lower. Most space elevator designs call for >100GPa; probably the cheapest and most thought out plan, by Dr. Bradley Edwards (of Liftport fame), calls for >120 GPa.

It gets worse. That's the strength for individual tubes. Bundles are 100GPa ribbon come true.

If you need links, I'll gladly provide them; I just don't want to have to post this every few days. We don't have a space-elevator cable material, and won't any time to, so everyone who says that we should just build a space elevator instead of a new launch vehicle might as well be clamoring for pixie dust.

Re:It may be more cost effective technically..

[Mr. Foogle]

Liftport is testing weak ribbons. The sort of ribbons they want simply do not exist. It's unobtanium.

If you read our literature (blog, press release, articles - heck you can write and ask) you'd discover we're not testing ribbons at all.

What we are doing is testing lifter technology. Sending a bot up and down in a reliable fashion is one of those easy-until-you-really-think-about-it deals. A whole lotta picky engineering needs to be ironed out to make those work in a reliable fashion.

Re:It may be more cost effective technically..

[Rei]

Hmm, I wonder what happened to my post. It's like my second paragraph is all messed up (and my other paragraphs missing). It was supposed to read something like:

It gets worse. That's the strength for individual tubes. Bundles are around 20GPa currently. They're limited by VdW and pi bonding. It gets worse still, however, because the best bulk fabric isn't as good as individual bundles, and are only (5-10) GPa. And even that's not ready for mass manufacture. Notice how many orders of magnitude this is off from what is needed.

Can it be improved? Yes, but not that much. Individual tubes can be made more consistant, and potentially have higher tensile strength (although probably not the earlier theoretical predictions) by tube type selection and refined production methods, but there clearly are major limits on this, and even those things will likely take decades of research before we can approach what their limits are.

Bundles can be improved by longer tubes, but again, they're not going to be stronger than the tubes themselves - only weaker. Getting long tubes (which will strengthen how tightly the tubes end up adhering to each other overall) in a mass-producable method is not going well. The way tubes today are assembled, be it CVD, electric arc, etc, is that the tube is extruded from a gathering sphere of condensing carbon, and it seems to be limited in its capability to grow. Short tubes can be merged, but that makes getting good tensile strength even harder. Instead of the problematic method of using long tubes to maintain bundle strength, you can do pressure-induced intertube bonding (trade sp2 bonds for sp3), but that'll weaken your tube tensile strengths.

In short, both problems, incredibly difficult or even potentially intractable by themselves, help defeat each other. Even with the best of luck and most dilligent research programs, with current tube-strength measurements there's not much hope for a realistic strength fiber any time in the forseable future, if it is even physically possible at all.

Launch Loop

[QuantumG]

Sigh. Ya know, we could build a structure to space with todays (hell, 20+ year old) technology if we wanted. The Launch Loop concept was published 20 years ago and is viable today. It costs less than a space elevator is predicted to cost and, unlike the space elevator, can be built from the ground up instead of from orbit down. So yeah, please stop saying stuff like: once we have strong carbon nanotube fibres we'll have a space elevator two weeks later. It doesn't work like that. The majority of studies that remain to be done to make the Launch Loop a reality are much the same as the many studies that still need to be done to make the space elevator a reality. Someone has got to finance those studies and unless you can get PhD students to do it on government funding that means you've got to pour money into a hole that might never fill up.

Re:Launch Loop

[deathcloset]

The launch loop still requires classic reentry for space vehicles.

This is still a fantastic idea for getting things up, though.

It's just getting back down that runs into the same old problems (and comming down from space gently is one of the best (most overlooked) features of a space elevator).

Its nicer to repel than base-jump.

Re:Launch Loop

[QuantumG]

If you don't spend any fuel getting up there it's pretty easy to carry enough fuel to decelerate and re-enter the atmosphere. Heat shields are only necessary because we can't afford to launch surplus fuel to slow down.. we have to use the atmosphere to brake.

Re:Launch Loop

[QuantumG]

You kinda missed a key point. Ya know, like the whole dynamic structure thing? The point of the Launch Loop (or Space Fountain if you prefer) is that you can build extremely tall structures with present day materials by accelerating a high speed ribbon around them. The momentum of the ribbon is what holds the structure up, not the strength of the materials.

Re:Launch Loop

[Catbeller]

The US may have trouble building maglev trains, but the rest of the world hasn't.

Sadly, the US isn't building much of anything anymore. We're a nation of managers and businessmen, not engineers.

Because most of the US lacks the basic knowledge set to even understand how a space elevator will work, or the trained imagination to envision what to do with it, the subject is incomprehensible to our citizenry.

We don't even build REGULAR trains anymore. We've deemed them dinosaurs used by the poor or the shipping industry looking to capitalize on a dying infrastructure, and left the rails to rot in a free-market grave. Maglev? Americans want a faster Mustang. They care nothing for trains, and never heard of maglevs in other countries. We think MONORAILS are stupid, even tho they are far superior for public transit than the 19th century horrors in Boston, New York, or Chicago.

I don't see America ever considering building a beanstalk.

Here's what I'm hearing and reading about the NASA back-to-the-moon program, as a for-instance: We went there before, over thirty years ago. Why go again?

This is not a field of dreams for building a fantastic SF future. Look to Japan, to China, even to Europe, maybe, for the human future in space. Far-sighted Americans will flock to those projects. But they will not be built in the US. We're lost in a dream in which the 1950's never ended, oil is cheap, we're the biggest dog on the block, and cars are the main means of self expression.

Re:Launch Loop

[QuantumG]

On the side where the ribbon comes down you generate electricity which you transfer over to the other side of the structure where the ribbon is going up. That's how you balance the structure without expending a whole lot of energy. The author has been studying this technology for 20 years, along with a lot of other people.. it's solid. There have been scale models built, lots of them.

What about rescues?

[saskboy]

Why isn't this stuff being used as an emergency rescue material, to make ladders that can be telescoped up to the 30th floor of skyscrapers? Surely there could be less ambitious projects for this material before committing to something that has to deal with the extreme stresses and temperatures in space and the upper atmosphere?

Make a model of a space ladder/elevator, by designing something that can save lives here at home, and it will take off like a rocket in the public's eye, pardon the pun.

Re:What about rescues?

[Spy der Mann]

It's not that easy, the space elevator is supposed to work because it has (will have) a counterweight on geosynchronous orbit that keeps the elevator in place. The space elevator is more like a string tied to a balloon than a wooden stick.

Doom and gloom

[millisa]

I like the idea of the space elevator . . . but won't it be a prime target for terrorist attacks? I mean, if I was a terrorist, it'd be the first place I'd direct my hijacked pla . . . moment, there's a knock at my door.

Re:Doom and gloom

[fbg111]

Terrorists aren't going to be crashing planes into buildings anymore. The only reason they got away with it the first time was b/c the passengers didn't know their plans, and the ones who did, on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania, fought back. From now on, for any hijacking attempt, the passengers and crew will assume the intent is to crash the plane and fight back. Everyone knows the rules have changed and that cooperation and passivity = death.

Tiny, successfully concealed bombs are more of a concern now than suicide hijackings, but those won't pose much of a threat to space elevators as long as official flight paths require staying away from them.

Article in IEEE Spectrum

[cetialphav]

The August issue of IEEE Spectrum also had a story about the space elevator. This article is available online here. Not knowing much about the space elevator, I found this article very informative.

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:Yes and No

[zippthorne]

Well we still need relatively cheap heavy launch vehicles to build the space elevator in the first place, so I don't see working on an apollo type project as being an incompatable goal.

Money

[imunfair]

I know we have to plan for the future and all, but since Mars travel probably won't be viable or even valuable for another 60 to 80 years (by which time I'll probably be dead) I would much rather have a nice reduction in taxes.

How about this - reduce our taxes a bit, and for the non-critical portion of our taxes let us choose what program they go toward funding. Some people might choose a government funded AIDS cure - some might choose Mars exploration ... but I really think the people should be allowed to choose which optional programs get their money - if it really needs to be taken from them in the first place.

I dont get it...

[imsabbel]

Maybe i am a bit out of touch (although i doubt it, being physicist and seeing people who actively work in the nanoparticle research and astrophysics department everyday), but i think this is all such a bullshit.

Space elevator this, space elevator that. Its just a pie-in-the-sky dream, and will be for the next century(ies). We dont have bucktubes "thick as a hair but strong enough to lift a car".
We dont even have them a meter long and strong enough to lift an apple.
And even than, it took millenia to get from iron->steel->a few km steel wire for bridges/ect.
Singularity this or that, you shouldnt expect something like the support of the golden gate bridge via nanotube based cables the next decade(s)
(not even mentioning the hurdles of a structure 30.000km+ long and sturdy enough to support the lifting vehicle and atmospheric conditions).

Also, the best we ever did concerning long wires and space was a test a few years ago, where they even failed to unwind a 300km, unstained wire in free space.

Not to mention that to get the whole framework running you need an efficent way of getting material and people up there to begin with... without a shuttle mk2 or 3 or 4 or 5 there is not even a point to start the whole shit.

But it seems nowaydays you only need to throw some buzzwords like "nanotubes" into the crowed and they would believe you even if you promised them portable teleporters...

Re:I dont get it...

[cephyn]

You make a good point. nanotube based teleporters would be faster and more cost-effective than a space elevator!

I say we put $12bn or so into nanotube powered teleporters. who's with me!?

Re:I dont get it...

[deathcloset]

you're a physicist?

how could you use an analogy like "it took millenia to get from iron->steel->a few dm steel wire for bridges" when it took millenia to get from horse and carriage to the car...but then only a half-century to get into space?

seriously, what's the average velocity of a horse and carriage vs. the average speed of an orbiting body?

now juxtapose that over that timeline...

and what about energy? we had fire to heat us for millenia. then within decades of the light-bulb we have nuclear reactors.

please formulate a similar chart to the aforementioned.

your the kind of physicist who looks through microscopes not telescopes, aren't you?

Re:I dont get it...

[Goldsmith]

I am a physicist who works in nanotechnology, carbon nanotubes even. I guess I would be one of those physicists who looks through a microscope, and not a telescope. I'm really not sure if you were trying to make a point with that line, but it seems a funny thing to say in a discussion about nanotechnology.

The things which are coming will blow your mind, but a space elevator with nanotubes isn't happening any time soon, despite what any historians may tell you. Contrary to what the "article" suggests, NASA IS working on this technology. They have spent a huge amount of money trying to get someone to grow a rope of continuous nanotubes just 1 meter long. Some of the best people in the world at nanotube growth are working on this (and have been working on this), and it will take a few years yet before they actually do it. Consider that two nanotubes tied (welded, bound, woven...) together are nowhere near as strong as one continuous nanotube. Consider also that nanotubes grow at around 10^-5 meters/s. Geosynchronous orbit is about 3.6*10^7 meters away. Here, really is the fundamental problem if we're going to try to grow a space elevator. If you go through the math, it would take about 10^5 years with today's technology, which makes the prediction of centuries very optimistic. I think it will take less than centuries (as in, I think we will find new growth or welding techniques), but there may be better ways of getting into space.

So, lift a car first.

[Tackhead]

> 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.

No, it hasn't.

The space elevator will become viable when someone creates a strand of carbon nanotube and lifts a car with it.

If you want to make me believe that a carbon nanotube space elevator is a viable proposition, demostrate that you can build a carbon nanotube suspension bridge first.

Doesn't have to be a replacement for the Brooklyn Bridge or the Golden Gate. A footpath over a creek at your local engineering college will do.

Until then, you're as likely to go into orbit on a space elevator's as you are on a matter/antimatter drive: as in "not at all".

A matter of time

[lightyear4]

The LiftPort Group of companies working towards a space-elevator are making a great deal of progress. Slashdot reported on the faa approval of their high altitude tests, for example. See here and here for more LiftPort specific information. Check here and here here for several reports concerning the viability of the elevator -- be sure to check the NIAC pdf. Blaise Gassend has a great collection of information. Finally, though carbon nanotubes are still in their infancy (its been a little around ten years since they were discovered) - their theoretical tensile strengths are perfect for application in a space elevator construction. This recent development spells a rosy future, and many innovations yet to come.

That's one small step for man...

[Chysn]

...one giant leap for the first wise ass to press all the buttons (Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere, Exosphere...) and piss off the other astronauts.

Re:Space elevator musac?

[Herkum01]

Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"! :)

difference between the two:

[GroeFaZ]

Launch Loop presentation and Space Elevator presentation .

For large projects to be realized, they either have to be of decisive strategic/military value during war (Manhattan project), or they have to completely capture the hearts of the citizens that are supposed to pay for it all (Apollo Project, "before this decade is out..."). Clearly, for the Space Elevator, the latter is the case. I, for one, have not heard of Launch Loop before, and the dry PDFs and text files that are Google's #1 on the term didn't really invite me to care about it. The Space Elevator, on the other hand, has been part of the popular culture for decades, and has recently surged astronomically (no pun intended) in terms of mainstream recognition.

Just as it would have been more affordable and scientifically more valuable to gradually conquer space and ultimately the moon (i.e. with manned space stations and a launch from space etc.), it was the extreme appeal of the "moon shot", the giant leap that won the favor over the more economical approach.

KE = 0.5 * m * v^2

[klossner]

Structural engineering issues aside, the big problem with space elevators is the junk in low earth orbit. If a 200 kg object hits the structure at a relative velocity of 15,000 MPH, it will release energy equivalent to one ton of TNT.

from the lab to working product...

[alizard]

Show me an actual, working 100 meter long CNT cable with strengths comparable to what the Space Elevator will require and I'm ready to discuss it.

If you simply want to get cheap payload into orbit this decade using materials that are NOT theoretical, find a way to get funding to the blimp-to-orbit people at JP Aerospace.

Lots of things wrong with the Space Elevator concept... it breaking could kill a lot of people... but the dealkiller is that you can't build a structure with theoretical materials, and it shouldn't take a "rocket scientist" to figure this out.

Re:Hmmm....

[king-manic]

A space elevator will be made of carbon fiber nanotubes correct?? What would be the effect on a hurricane hitting the elevator? Can the string be realed in from one end?? Would it be more prudent to build this in a place far away from a coastline??

negliable if built correctly. The local winds wouldn't have enough kinetic force to move the cable much.

Re:Hmmm....

[CosmeticLobotamy]

something of this magnitude would be a favorite target of terrorist or anyone looking to make a point

I'm just glad we never built a Sears Tower or an Empire State building or a Golden Gate Bridge. Those kinds of things would get knocked down constantly if they existed. Damn terrorists. Can't hardly go outside anymore.

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.

Re:frick n frack

[DigitalRaptor]

Actually, the design for one of the ribbons was so thin and wide that the wind resistance alone meant that it fell at about the speed of a cardboard box.

See http://www.elevator2010.org/site/primer.html and http://www.liftport.com/faq2.php#science2 for starters, Google for more.

What really makes sense is an infrastructure that makes getting people and payloads in particular to and from space cheap and reliable, even ordinary. The only chance for that right now is a space elevator.

You have a 3% chance of death flying on a space shuttle. That's an incredibly poor record, and incredibly expensive.

A Lunar Space Elevator

[some guy I know]

Less gravity means the cable could be shorter

The length of the cable is also dependent on other things, such as the rotational period of the anchoring body.
Since the Moon rotates only once every 29 days or so, the cable would need to be so long that it would hit the Earth, in theory.
Also, in any location other than directly toward Earth or directly opposed to Earth (on the far side of the Moon), Earth's gravity would distort the elevator.

There is a way to place a space elevator on the near side of the Moon, by using the Earth's gravity to counterweight the "top" of the cable, rather than using centrifugal force.
This type of elevator has several advantages:

• It is much shorter than it would otherwise need to be, meaning it uses much less material in its construction, and the material does not need to be as strong as for a longer, non-Earth's-gravity-counterweighted cable.
  (Note, however, that it's still longer than the Earth's Space Elevator.)
  In fact, such an elevator's cable could be made out of Kevlar!
• The cable goes through L1, one of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, which is a node on the Interplanetary Superhighway.
• Material mined on the Moon can be lifted "up" the elevator, through the Earth-Moon Lagrange point, then lifted "down" the cable toward the Earth, and deposited directly into Earth orbit.

This last advantage is particularly, uh, advantageous, because such orbits are highly elliptical, and could even intersect the Earth or its atmosphere, which would allow material (e.g., the He3 that you mentioned) to be shipped from the Moon to the Earth without using any rockets at all!

parts of the moon are in constant sunlight

The only parts of the Moon that are in constant sunlight are perhaps a very few locations at the poles, which are useless vis a vis a Lunar Space Elevator (although this article proposes a non-vertical Lunar Space Elevator terminating at the Lunar South Pole that could be used to lift water (believed to be located there) into Earth orbit).

Search Google for more info.

Re:"Unobtainium"

[wurp]

Hmm, well, I have a BS in Physics and Mathematics, double major, so I'm not just assuming "there must be an answer, and someone smarter than me will know it". If you were as smart as you seem to think, you would realize that looking in on a problem from an essentially layman point of view (which both you and I have) doesn't give you the vantage point to argue what complex engineering processes can't do. Please note that your argument about bond strength is a red herring - I never asserted we would figure out a way to make the individual bonds stronger.

Basically what we have is a difference of attitude. I see "we have the engineering figured out for using 65 GPa ribbons for a space elevator, and we can produce material now that could almost theoretically have that strength, and in theory we could produce materials almost twice as strong" and I think, this is something that needs research. I am not claiming that 10 years and $100 billion will build a space elevator - I'm claiming that it could put us in a position to know how to build a space elevator, so getting the real funding becomes politically feasible.

You see the same statements, and throw up your hands saying we can't do it. Your arguments that we can't do it are pretty damn weak...

• you don't even seem to be arguing that we can't do it, just that it would be expensive, once we find, say, 30% tougher nanotubes and ways to composite them into ribbons 70% as strong as the tubes are individually
• you assume that we can never do better than our current models of the chemistry and engineering demonstrate. Remember the 9.6kbaud "physical limits" on modems?
• your position seems to be that we've achieved almost all we will achieve with a technology that we didn't even know existed 15 years ago

So your position is that we could almost do it with the materials we have now, on a 15 year old technology, if we had the right compositing process, but that it's ludicrous to think that we could actually do it with 10 more years of research focused on improving strength of individual tubes and processes for producing ribbons?

Comparing this to alchemists' dreams of lead to gold is beyond laughable. Assuming that you know more than the researchers dedicating themselves to this research is ridiculous. Assuming science and engineering will go backward rather than forward is demonstrably false. Asserting a strawman argument about bond strength is a red herring. And repeated commands to "deal" (by which you mean adopt your pessimist philosophy) are obnoxious.