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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."
Absent any stunning advances in material sciences,
The TFA states that carbon nanotubes would require a 4x increase in strength compared to present-day materials, and that the past 5 years of research have already brought about a 100-fold improvement ... sounds to me like many stunning advances have already happened and we're well on track to fully-stunned status.
This is just a Popular Science article, i.e. "hey wouldn't it be neat if but it ain't happening so we're really just jerking your chain."
"Japan is hosting an international conference in November to draw up a timetable for the machine."
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
And as a sub-subnote, this is approximately the cost of developing a complete conventional man-rated rocket launch system. I'm skeptical of the quoted price tag, but it would be extremely cheap if it could be achieved.
That's not the actual price-tag, it's NIF economics. You propose the project with a $9.5B price tag and spend your money providing whatever results you can. You then apologize for failing to complete, but assure the backers that you're nearly done, but need an additional $5B. When that's spent, you've hit a snag so complex that not even the top minds in the world could have seen it coming, but you can finish the project for only $8B more. After all, who wants to abandon a project that you've already spent several years and nearly $15B on when you're so close. Repeat until retirement.
It's amazing how well this seems to work in practice.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.