Skyhook Robot Passes 1000 Foot Mark

JhohannaVH writes "MSNBC.com is running a story about yesterday's successful test of the Space Elevator!! Maybe it will become a reality after all." From the article: "This week's testing involved a 12-foot (4-meter) diameter balloon. Safety lines held by team members kept the balloon from floating away. The ribbon dangling from the balloon was made of composite fiberglass, with the robot lifter running up and down the tether ... During the day, the highest altitude reached by the balloon/ribbon/robot combination was 1,000 feet (305 meters). 'It gives us complete confidence that the mile goal is well within reach,' Laine said. Laine said that the Federal Aviation Administration has been very supportive and helpful in orchestrating their test flights. "

Comments

To arrive: take a step, repeat

[Julian Morrison]

A fifth of a mile may be a tiny fraction of the distance needed to climb a real space elevator, but that's almost beside the point. If this doohickey can climb 1000 feet it can climb a hundred million, assuming the battery holds out. It just has to keep trundling upward.

The cable is the scientifically hard part, not the climber.

Not to undermine the hard work done here...

[popo]

... but isn't the cable the difficult part about building a space elevator?

This thing is of course, pretty cool, but it seems to me to be a pretty basic mechanical device. My understanding is that developing ultra-high tension/flexibility nanofibers capable of stretching from Earth to orbit, and developing the orbital platform was what made construction of a space elevator difficult.

My two cents.

_________

As Diddy says: Don't pull out your wallet if you ain't going to use it.

Cute test, missing something...

[Mac Degger]

Nice, only of course this 'test' misses the one crucial, difficult part; the material to make the wire from. The space elevator will be built (either in tether form or in straight up crawl-up-the-nanotube form)...as soon as we can create the lenght of the material needed. That is the only technology needed to be tested; the rest (ie what they tested here) is a relative no-brainer on which funds needn't really have been spent. Proof of that; I doubt they learned anything crucial (or even really relevant) which can be applied to the real, fuill scale thing.

Re:62,000 miles?

[MichaelSmith]

62,000 miles?!?

Yes, why not? In theory you just need to go a short distance past Geosynchronous orbit, which is about half that, but only if you have a very heavy counterweight.

By increasing the distance they reduce the counterweight mass.

Re:SkyDeck 1, Space Elevator 0

[nmb3000]

Since when does a funny quote become informative? Don't you guys get the joke?

I believe what I said here still applies:

sheesh, it's funny people, Funny!

I think the reason some Funny posts get modded Insightful, Informative, Whatever is because starting sometime ago Funny mods no longer improve your karma. Thus to counteract, if a post already has a few Funny mods, a moderator might mod it Informative to boost the poster's karma a bit.

Makes some sense to me. After all, Funny comments in /. stories are most of the reason I read comments. A real knee-slapper deservers a bit of karma methinks :)

Makes some sense to me.

And me too :)