*ahem*Bob Forward*ahem*
President Bush wants to return to the moon and put a man on Mars. But scientist Bradley C. Edwards has an idea that's really out of this world: an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space. Edwards thinks an initial version could be operating in 15 years...He pegs the cost at $10 billion ... "It's not new physics — nothing new has to be discovered, nothing new has to be invented from scratch," Edwards' elevator would climb on a cable made of nanotubes — tiny bundles of carbon atoms many times stronger than steel. The cable would be about three feet wide and thinner than a piece of paper, but capable of supporting a payload up to 13 tons. The cable would be attached to a platform on the equator, off the Pacific coast of South America where winds are calm, weather is good and commercial airplane flights are few. The platform would be mobile so the cable could be moved to get out of the path of orbiting satellites.
I love the future -- its nano-electric!!
...Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, envisioned it a century ago. And Arthur C. Clarke's novel "The Foundations of Paradise," published in 1979, talks of a space elevator 24,000 miles high
And Robert Heinlein had one blown up by terrorists in “Friday”.
Posted by triticale on 06/26/04 at 07:46 AMThey would have to invent one new thing, a way to make the nanotubes miles long instead of microns. It sounds doable to me though, there were a lot more technical obstacles than that whe the idea originated. There’s a kind of plastic that’d work for smaller worlds.
Posted by Dave Munger on 06/26/04 at 02:38 PMAh, the joys of technomasterbation.
Technology is *simple.* Engineering is *easy.*
MAKING A BUCK IS *HARD*!
*Only* $10 billion to build the first space elevator…
OK—who’s (a) gonna pony up those $10 billion smackers, and more imporantly (b) what’s your market to pay the $10 billion back (AND the interest on that $10 billion; don’t forget the interest!).
When I worked for Pete Conrad’s startup rocket company Rocket Development Corporation (sexy name, eh? ), we were all gobsmacked to find out that the single biggest cost in developing and building a rocket WAS THE INTEREST ON THE MONEY INVOLVED. It dominated all costs—it was fully 55% of a project’s total cost!
Space elevators will come, and will come in time. AFTER the hard, HARD work of building businesses that actually MAKE PROFITS doing stuff in space are established and that then make a space elevator an economic proposition.
Posted by on 06/28/04 at 09:03 AM
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