When I first heard reference a while back to a "space elevator" I was pretty skeptical. It sounded like science fiction. Then I found how many organizations are investing a lot of money in serious proposals to develop a space elevator. An organization in Japan has just announced their initiative to work together with a US group on a space elevator design. And there is a major international conference coming up in November in Japan to lay out a time table for development.
Some groups talk about an elevator to an incredible 100,000 km. The concept would be for an elevator car to climb a cable or ribbon of a material such as carbon fibre. Back in 2002 there was a group talking of an elevator by 2014. Now dates such a 2020 or 2030 are targeted.
One comment was that a downside would be the amount of "elevator music" you would have to listen to on a ride up a 100,000 km space elevator. But the possibility is too far away yet to push the "UP" button and wait to get on.
6 comments:
That makes me think of the tower of Babel.
Just saying. :)
that's exactly what I thought, Jen! :)
One usually takes an elevator to go up to or down from something. To where or what would this elevator go and why? The technology has some great potential for spinoffs even if the elevator just went nowhere.
Hey pops, you've got to fix your link to the CNN article: the "http" is missing the "h".
Chris is excited that this is happening again, since the original company went under a while ago.
(And this is no more the Tower of Babel than a rocket ship is.)
The link to the article is fixed.
The concept is that payloads could be more economically sent up the elevator to a space platform or station, and sent into orbit from there, compared to sending up rockets.
I guess the Tower of Babel comparison could be that it is a physical link to sky. Somebody also compared it to Jack and the Beanstock.
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