First: LiftPort Nanotech will not be making nanotubes for the space elevator in the near future. The SE is not going to be built this year, or even this decade. Any CNTs we sell in the next few years will go towards commercial use in other products (e.g., stronger plastics).
Second: LiftPort is on the board of Elevator:2010, and hence is not entering the competition.
Re:A post free of FUD, a dab of on-topic
on
Space Elevator Update
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· Score: 2, Informative
Michael (the "vision" guy who talked during the robot demo) also gave a talk at Norwescon the previous night outlining many of the technical matters. Because the space elevator is a complex infrastructure project, technical discussions can go on for hours, so it can be hard to deal with people's questions in a one-hour talk.
FYI, there are plenty of people willing to discuss the technical (as well as legal, political, financial, etc. etc.) issues on our forums at http://www.liftport.com/forums/. Drop in, ask questions, read some of the alternate design suggestions, and see what you think.
OK, sorry. It was not a blizzard. However, from my perspective up on top of the Green building where we didn't have anything taller than us to give any shielding, it certainly seemed bad enough. I couldn't see across the river (a distance of maybe 400 or 500 smoots?), and the winds kept changing. We were trying to handle wet/semi-freezing ribbon and rope, dealing with poor reception on walkie-talkies, etc. etc., and it sure felt miserable. When I posted my blog entry, I'd just returned and was exhausted & cold, and glad that the robot survived the problems we'd encountered. Maybe I exaggerated in the adrenaline rush.
BTW, while the final lifter will of course need to withstand much more severe conditions than at MIT last Friday, the conditions on Friday were much harsher than anything our robot had been through to date. As someone else posted, we're taking progress one step at a time. Build a little, test a little. Repeat. Pretty soon we'll be adding payload and wireless power beaming capability, increasing the size, going for even higher climbs, longer duration, etc. But we want to make sure we understand one set of issues about lifter design before we complicate things by adding a bunch of new features.
Sort of. The bottom was supposed to be anchored as well, but we had problems, and wound up having a person hold the bottom. So it was "anchored" in a sense, just not as firmly as we would have liked. Given the conditions, we weren't going to waste lots of time mucking around.:-)
OK, so the server load caused by using Gallery for our photos was too much once we were slashdotted, and our host shut down our server sometime last night. We've now set up some static pages until the heavy traffic blows over. Sorry for the problem! If you're looking for some pictures of the demo, you can see them at http://www.liftport.com/MIT_demo/
Wow, I wasn't expecting my blog post to get/.'d. I was dead tired from the day of the test, and just wanted to get some info online for anyone who was curious. Sorry for not getting more details or photos up sooner.
BTW, the height of the building our robot climbed is 290 feet, not 260. Not a huge difference, but I wanted to correct the error in the original/. post.
After seeing more than a half-dozen comments on my blog post right after being slashdotted tonight, I got real motivated to get the pictures up ASAP. You can now see pictures of the day at http://www.liftport.com/gallery/MITdemo_2004Nov
Slashdot Mirror
Gee, you must be right. LiftPort has no hardware whatsoever, do we?
And that's not to mention the awards that some of our robots have won, the book we're publishing, etc.
First: LiftPort Nanotech will not be making nanotubes for the space elevator in the near future. The SE is not going to be built this year, or even this decade. Any CNTs we sell in the next few years will go towards commercial use in other products (e.g., stronger plastics).
Second: LiftPort is on the board of Elevator:2010, and hence is not entering the competition.
Michael (the "vision" guy who talked during the robot demo) also gave a talk at Norwescon the previous night outlining many of the technical matters. Because the space elevator is a complex infrastructure project, technical discussions can go on for hours, so it can be hard to deal with people's questions in a one-hour talk.
FYI, there are plenty of people willing to discuss the technical (as well as legal, political, financial, etc. etc.) issues on our forums at http://www.liftport.com/forums/. Drop in, ask questions, read some of the alternate design suggestions, and see what you think.
OK, sorry. It was not a blizzard. However, from my perspective up on top of the Green building where we didn't have anything taller than us to give any shielding, it certainly seemed bad enough. I couldn't see across the river (a distance of maybe 400 or 500 smoots?), and the winds kept changing. We were trying to handle wet/semi-freezing ribbon and rope, dealing with poor reception on walkie-talkies, etc. etc., and it sure felt miserable. When I posted my blog entry, I'd just returned and was exhausted & cold, and glad that the robot survived the problems we'd encountered. Maybe I exaggerated in the adrenaline rush.
BTW, while the final lifter will of course need to withstand much more severe conditions than at MIT last Friday, the conditions on Friday were much harsher than anything our robot had been through to date. As someone else posted, we're taking progress one step at a time. Build a little, test a little. Repeat. Pretty soon we'll be adding payload and wireless power beaming capability, increasing the size, going for even higher climbs, longer duration, etc. But we want to make sure we understand one set of issues about lifter design before we complicate things by adding a bunch of new features.
Sort of. The bottom was supposed to be anchored as well, but we had problems, and wound up having a person hold the bottom. So it was "anchored" in a sense, just not as firmly as we would have liked. Given the conditions, we weren't going to waste lots of time mucking around. :-)
OK, so the server load caused by using Gallery for our photos was too much once we were slashdotted, and our host shut down our server sometime last night. We've now set up some static pages until the heavy traffic blows over. Sorry for the problem! If you're looking for some pictures of the demo, you can see them at http://www.liftport.com/MIT_demo/
Wow, I wasn't expecting my blog post to get /.'d. I was dead tired from the day of the test, and just wanted to get some info online for anyone who was curious. Sorry for not getting more details or photos up sooner.
BTW, the height of the building our robot climbed is 290 feet, not 260. Not a huge difference, but I wanted to correct the error in the original /. post.
After seeing more than a half-dozen comments on my blog post right after being slashdotted tonight, I got real motivated to get the pictures up ASAP. You can now see pictures of the day at http://www.liftport.com/gallery/MITdemo_2004Nov