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Space Elevator Rebuttal From LiftPort Founder
TropicalCoder is the reader who submitted the story about the possible demise of LiftPort a couple of weeks back. The resulting discussion was mostly negative about the feasibility of building a space elevator. TropicalCoder writes: "At one point during the discussion, LiftPort founder Michael J. Laine personally entered the discussion, but for the most part remained invisible since he hadn't logged in. I responded to his comment that if he would like a chance to rebut the criticisms, he should contact me and I would undertake to interview him and post the resulting story on Slashdot." Read below for the story of how Mr. Laine's detailed reply and rebuttal to that Slashdot discussion came about. TropicalCoder asks, "After reading LiftPort's rebuttal to Slashdot critics, do any of you now feel your pessimism somewhat dispelled?"
Michael Laine called me long distance via cell phone that very day from his back yard near Seattle, and spoke with me for over an hour. Michael came across as a rather sober, likable fellow, not at all like the crackpot image one would conjure up from reading many of the Slashdot comments. He was clearly wounded by the stinging criticisms in the Slashdot discussion, and I couldn't help empathizing with him. Here was man who had put his money where his mouth was, risking everything on his dream, perhaps suffering his darkest hour, and enduring ridicule on top of that.
At no point during the conversation did I get any impression of a huckster who would sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, something that I was on the lookout for. It was clear to me that he sincerely believes in what he is doing. Whether he succeeds in the end or not, I would prefer to call him a "visionary." After all, for every great visionary you can recall from history, there must have been a thousand others who tried and failed, but are no less visionary because of that. The jury is still out on LiftPort, and rumors of their death would be premature. They continue their research, and as I write are preparing for the "Tethered Towers" demo on Thursday June 28.
At the end of the conversation it was agreed that I would summarize the Slashdot discussion for him and offer him an opportunity for point-by-point rebuttal. I completed this summary (in which many Slashdot readers will recognize their own words), and sent it off to him the next day. He acknowledged receipt and promised an answer shortly. A few weeks passed, and I imagined that he must have decided in the end that the criticisms were so severe, perhaps it would be best just to try to forget it. It was a total surprise to me when a thoroughly detailed response arrived in my mailbox today, demonstrating that the people at LiftPort at least are still convinced that building a space elevator is possible.
Space elevator themes have been celebrated in science fiction and many Slashdot readers have shared the dream, only to become disillusioned with the apparent pending demise of LiftPort. After reading LiftPort's rebuttal to Slashdot critics, do any of you now feel your pessimism somewhat dispelled?"
Michael Laine called me long distance via cell phone that very day from his back yard near Seattle, and spoke with me for over an hour. Michael came across as a rather sober, likable fellow, not at all like the crackpot image one would conjure up from reading many of the Slashdot comments. He was clearly wounded by the stinging criticisms in the Slashdot discussion, and I couldn't help empathizing with him. Here was man who had put his money where his mouth was, risking everything on his dream, perhaps suffering his darkest hour, and enduring ridicule on top of that.
At no point during the conversation did I get any impression of a huckster who would sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, something that I was on the lookout for. It was clear to me that he sincerely believes in what he is doing. Whether he succeeds in the end or not, I would prefer to call him a "visionary." After all, for every great visionary you can recall from history, there must have been a thousand others who tried and failed, but are no less visionary because of that. The jury is still out on LiftPort, and rumors of their death would be premature. They continue their research, and as I write are preparing for the "Tethered Towers" demo on Thursday June 28.
At the end of the conversation it was agreed that I would summarize the Slashdot discussion for him and offer him an opportunity for point-by-point rebuttal. I completed this summary (in which many Slashdot readers will recognize their own words), and sent it off to him the next day. He acknowledged receipt and promised an answer shortly. A few weeks passed, and I imagined that he must have decided in the end that the criticisms were so severe, perhaps it would be best just to try to forget it. It was a total surprise to me when a thoroughly detailed response arrived in my mailbox today, demonstrating that the people at LiftPort at least are still convinced that building a space elevator is possible.
Space elevator themes have been celebrated in science fiction and many Slashdot readers have shared the dream, only to become disillusioned with the apparent pending demise of LiftPort. After reading LiftPort's rebuttal to Slashdot critics, do any of you now feel your pessimism somewhat dispelled?"
I really enjoyed the writeup and the interview. I thought that it covered the points in a very concise fashion while also outlining all the points that had been raised in aa very negative manner. I look forward to following this project and its future directions.
No Coffee, No Workee
Not at all. If anything my pessism has increased when I read the spin, handwaving, misdirection, and evasions in Mr Laine's 'rebuttal'.
For example, this little gem:
Q: Business model is predicated on a technology that not only does not exist but you are incapable of inventing.
A: That's true for the president of Boeing too. There's no way he could engineer the likes of the 777 with just the top level executives. He hires the right people to design, test and build these wonders of technology. Rather than waste our investors money on hiring full time engineers that could not succeed within the timeframe allowed by the dollars available, we subcontract. Outsourcing is not a new concept, and it saves companies quite a bit of money and time.
Notice the answer completely unrelated to the question and the 'spin'.
Or this one:
Q: Perhaps should have been managed by a more highly qualified individual, such as a professional engineer with advanced engineering management degrees
Because all engineers make good business administrators? Engineers are (and this is a generalization, I admit) generally too cautious. Innovators are risk takers. Entrepeneurs are risk takers. Engineers want triple redundancy and safety factors. To run a company for 4 years off a $200,000 investment takes talent. Granted, much more was invested by Mr. Laine himself, from his personal income, to keep this business running.
More spin - and the fantastic claim that running a business for $200k for four years implies some kind of 'talent'. Heck, I could run a business for two *centuries* with that kind of investment. (It wouldn't produce a profit - but it would be 'run' and about as effective as LiftPort.)
Q: You'll never see a fully functional space elevator on earth. The requirements are too close to the edge of what is even theoretically possible.
If it weren't for the costs, we could build one this year.
To put it bluntly - this is an outright lie. Period. if it were true - why is LiftPort spending money on R&D rather than production?
Q: Even if the materials science isn't the problem, we have never made 36,000 miles of ANYTHING before.
Roads? Railroads? The SMW3 fiber optic cable is 39,000km long. That's over a third of the 100,000km necessary to build the Elevator to Space (not 36,000 miles).
The SMW3 fiber optic cable isn't a unitary and (for all practical purposes) flawless carbon nanotube fiber. Roads and railroads aren't unitary either. Micheal is either very disingenuous or very clueless.
Q: You need a material approximately 3 times the strength of a (perfect) carbon nanotube in order to be a relatively safe civil/space engineering construction.
That goes back to my statement earlier about engineers. No. You're not going to be able to have triple redundancy, and safety factors. You will have safety margins, and one of our first cargoes would be the second space elevator. We should be able to build that with half the strength of "perfect" SWNTs. We will employ standards of safety. We're sure the international legal community would see to that. About half the team grew up near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The failure of this bridge is a standard lesson in how NOT to engineer something for most engineering schools. We understand what is at stake.
I too live near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge - and no, that is not how the bridge collapse is taught in engineering schools. Because in fact, the basic engineering of the bridge was quite sound - they failed however to take into account the effects of the winds. Numerous b
Let me preface this by saying I work with carbon nanotubes (as an "innovator," not an engineer).
Where these guys are right on is that building a CNT factory would generate the kind of money they need to get going, especially if they can reliably grow high quality tubes. They are absolutely right that spin off technologies could more than make up for their current investments. But, as they recently found out, nanotubes are very hard to grow in large amounts, and they grow very slowly... hence the current high cost.
That leads to where they went wrong: They had "contractors" working on nanotube growth. It's not easy to grow CNTs, and it's not well understood. It's very difficult to reproduce published work on CNT growth unless you really, really know what you're doing. They need to form partnerships with the people working with nanotubes who are on the cutting edge of growth research. While they've tried and failed to build a factory, Iijima's group has made major breakthroughs in growing nanotubes in bulk, and he's the obvious person to start off trying to get on board with this (as a well known Nobel laureate working with nanotubes). If not his group, then any number of dedicated CNT-growth research groups in the US.
At some point, it would not be a bad idea to let a scientist into the upper management of a space elevator company. Just as a smart inventor will let go of some control of a company to a business person, these business people would have been wise to let a scientist make some of their decisions.
By (publicly, at least) focusing on robotics, they missed the boat on one key technology they needed which would have also provided them with the funds to keep everything else going. Hopefully whoever takes over leadership of the space elevator community has more luck.
More accurately, it's like asking Intel to release their trade-secret research on building 10 GHz chips, because you don't believe they're possible.
Look, the guy said they could do it with existing technology, given the funds for 100s of heavy lift rockets (Delta-V maybe?) and A LOT of Honeywell Spectra fibre. Think for a second how much 100s of heavy lift rockets would cost, even if they could have that many made within a production timespan - that's crazy money for most anyone. But if a group of BIG companies got together (Japanese style) I reckon it's almost feasible.
OTOH, and relating back to our Mars story, IF this cat can show big investors a serious engineering proposal for a project with existing technology, we just got our first "train station".
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Well, just saw this
EuroSpaceward was just awarded funding by The National Research Fund of Luxembourg to hold a workshop on space elevator climber and tether design primarily focusing on systems for entry in the US and German competitions. The tentative dates are Nov. 14-16, 2007 and the workshop will be held in a yet to be announced venue in Luxembourg.
found at http://www.spaceelevator.com/
So it does seem there is still some interest outside US, albeit for entering a NASA based competition. I think that the immigration problems in the US for foreign students will quickly have some negative effect on innovation in the US in the long term. Innovation in the US has always been due to it's courting of students world wide to study and then contribute.
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
Postulate for a moment a limitless supply of raw materials, and a limitless space to put waste materials in. In that environment, what, exactly, is wrong with a "consume all" mentality?
The space elevator - or rather, a technology which gives efficient, low-cost access to space - has the potential to make that scenario a reality. We've got near-earth asteroids, the moon, and the entire asteroid belt full of metals. We've got moons and an Oort Cloud full of CHON - carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen: the building blocks of all our food. And we've got all of space to discard waste products into. The resources exist in this solar system to keep us in consumables for a long, long time if we can just get out hands on them.
An important - not, of course, the only, or even the hardest, but an important - step towards this is a cheap, high-volume way of ferrying material out of and into Earth's gravity well.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...