Slashdot Mirror
Space Elevator Company LiftPort In Trouble
TropicalCoder writes "The LiftPort Group, founded four years ago with the lofty dream of building a stairway to heaven, has seemingly reached the end the line. The dream was to develop a ribbon of carbon nanotubes 100,000 km long, anchored to the Earth's surface and with a counterweight in space, providing a permanent bridge to orbit. Elevator cars would be robotic 'lifters' which would climb the ribbon to deliver cargo and eventually people to orbit or beyond. Now LiftPort has all but run out of funds, and the State of Washington's Securities Division has entered a Statement of Charges (PDF) against LiftPort Inc. dba LiftPort Group and founder Michael Laine."
The dream was to develop a ribbon of carbon nanotubes 100,000 km long, anchored to the Earth's surface and with a counterweight in space, providing a permanent bridge to orbit
And it didn't work?!?!?! No S... Sherlock!
Tell me about feasible goals.
how long until
Lesson: You don't offer "common stock" to people without following detailed securities regulations and laws. In fact, you don't mention that at all until you've consulted with people that know of these things. The president of Liftport obviously never took an Economics class where you would have learned at least that the whole stock system is very complicated and very regulated.
Good call, Washington (state). Sucks for the idea, though.
Well I would be interested to know how the State of Washinton came to these conclusions and charges. Blue Sky laws are put into place to protect un-savy investors from being taken by kinky investment opportunities, but the charges don't seem to translate into a direct blue sky violation, and at worst, seems to stem from his lack of registering with the State that he would be selling securities.
They mention that he sold to un-accredited investors, but this is allowable under Regulation D, assuming he didn't take more then $1M and that the people he took money from were previous business associates, friends, or family.
I think this boils down to an angry Washington resident that put money into this 'venture' and lost it, and now is angry.
I was pretty much convinced the space elevator was never going to happen with our current understanding of material technology anyway. There was a study in Nature a while back by Nicola Pugno who pointed out that defects in carbon nanoribbon would pretty much make it impossible. You need 62 gigapascals of tension strength for a space elevator. Carbon nanoribbon gives you 100 gigapascals. First, note how slim that margin is, and that's with PERFECT nanoribbon. But perfection is difficult to achieve in the real world, and inevitable atomic defects reduce the strength of the ribbon dramatically. Just a single atom defect in a single strand reduces strength by 30%. Bulk material consisting of many strands reduces that even further.
I can't find the original article, but here's a typical write-up at the time.
Who knows, maybe somebody will invent something better than carbon nanotubes, but even a perfect ribbon has a mighty slim margin.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
In his book, High-Tech Ventures, Digital Equipment Corporation pioneer Gordon Bell analyzed various factors in the potential success of startups.
As I recall, one of his great big red flags was any product whose development entailed more than two technology breakthrough.
Yeah, here it is (PDF). He says, flatly, "A successful startup cannot be based on more than two breakthroughs in the state of the art. And for each area requiring a breakthrough, an alternative technology should be available as a backup."
So, by this measure, the Wright Brothers needed breakthroughs in engines and airframe design... so success was possible.
As for LiftPort, I think I've lost count of the number of breakthroughs they need.
And I'm not sure what their backup technology would have been if, by any chance, the carbon nanotube strategy turned out to be unfeasible.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
If you could even get 1/100th of the way there on materials, you would have a great company selling fibers for military and industrial applications. Precisely what I was thinking. It's like the people talking about putting up space hotels before we even have the cheap civilian access to space question answered.
Step 1: Found a startup whose business model is predicated on a technology that not only does not exist but you are incapable of inventing.
Step 2: Collect money from investors
Step 3: Hope this nonexistent technology falls out of the sky and directly into your lap.
Step 4: Profit!
Hey, I've got this great idea for making your very own Iron Man suit! That's right, you can fly into space, deadlift 100 tons, are bullet proof, missile proof, and nuclear bomb proof! Yes, folks, that's right! And it's all possible via the miracle of unobtanium. That's right, just get me some unobtanium and you can have your very own suit!
While we're at it, I'm selling land on the inside of my dyson sphere. Get in early before it's all gone!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It makes a good disaster story, but analysis shows that only significant danger is to anyone that happened to be on the elevator at the time.
It seems that a good place to try something like this would be the moon. It's relatively close, it has no wind to complicate things, it's gravity is dramatically less, so we could probably build it with today's materials science, and it would make getting on and off the moon dramatically easier.
After all, if your goal is to swim the English Channel, you might want to try swimming across a pool first.