Japanese Begin Working On Space Elevator

thebryce writes "From cyborg housemaids and waterpowered cars to dog translators and rocket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in the quest to turn science fiction into reality. Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier. Japan is increasingly confident that its sprawling academic and industrial base can solve those issues, and has even put the astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (£5 billion) on building the elevator. Japan is renowned as a global leader in the precision engineering and high-quality material production without which the idea could never be possible."

Comments

Engineering efficiency

[Kupfernigk]

Without venturing to comment on whether a space elevator is actually possible, the main reason is simple efficiency. Rockets are incredibly inefficient as power sources in any case, but then in addition you have to use almost all the energy produced to lift the fuel some part of the way. Then, having added all that potential energy to your Shuttle or whatever, on the way down you turn it all into heating the air. The result is huge amounts of fuel to get a very small payload into orbit.

A practical space elevator could use vehicles powered by electric motors, which would get about 70-80% efficiency. On the way down, the motors could be used as generators, getting back probably around 30-50% of the original energy supplied. The total energy consumption might only be a percent or so of that needed for a rocket. The design of the cable with electrical conductors on either side reaching all the way up to geostationary orbit is, of course, left as an exercise to the reader.

Re:a disaster waiting to happen

[Spatial]

Those sound like elements to factor into the design, rather than unforseeable or unpreventable disasters.

Re:call me when they have something

[Free the Cowards]

A space elevator essentially just needs certain advances in materials science. It's a big engineering project, but nothing more than that.

AI, on the other hand, is something that nobody in the world has any clue how to achieve. They're simply not comparable. We may very well see AI before a space elevator, but it will be because computer technology advances vastly more quickly than space technology.

And just for the record, I did not claim that FTL is impossible, merely that it's impossible according to accepted physical theory. And that statement is absolutely true.

Re:Just as a subnote...

[watzinaneihm]

So for the price of what Wall street caused US government to pay, you could get a space elevator for each country in the world (almost - the smallest ones will have to share ofcourse)