... the border between fiction and reality. Wow, I remember reading about space elevators in different science fiction novels, most notably for me the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Here's a link to a page describing Microsoft's role in sponsoring the annual Space Elevator conference: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/f...eElevator.mspx

I never realized the idea had been around since at least 1895! That was definitely an imaginative, forward-thinking guy. Any other sci-fi fans interested in this? Any of keep up with this more closely?
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Imagine the stress load on that cable at the base and the velocity at the space end. Pretty mind boggling stuff. Plus how long would the elevator ride take? Average Joe can't tolerate too many G's for any extended period of time.

There's no space elevator exclusion in my life insurance policy, I'd ride it.
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That's kinda crazy. They make it seem so easy.
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At first glance I thought, oh god what have the drug cartels done know to get drugs into the US. Then I thought oh that! LOL

This ranks right up there with the work being done on teleportation. Amazing how Star Trek seems to be coming to life in our time.
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Yeah, they did really brush past all the technical details and a list of what technologies are currently in place and what is still on the drawing board.

Maybe twenty years from now I'll treat myself to a ride on the space elevator for my birthday. You think they'll allow smoking in space? :-)
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Space might be the only place they allowing smoking in 20 years.

Sounds cool, but remember.....2 people in the Space Elevator and one farts...everybody knows who did it. :-)
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Didn't Arthur C. Clarke come up with the idea first - like he did with so many others? Don't remember the precise book title, but I think it had "Paradise" in it.
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Clarke used the idea in Fountains of Paradise in the early 80s I think. I don't know for sure who had the original idea but the article claims it was a scientist named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who dreamed it up in 1895.

I believe it's a really neat idea. Of course, can you imagine the crazy case of vertigo you'd get at 30,000 + feet if that thing had a glass-bottomed observation room? :-) THAT would be an awesome ride no matter how slow it moved. It would certainly take a while - possibly days - to cover the 62,000 feet. That's about 11 3/4 miles straight up!!! Well, "up" becomes very relative once you leave gravity, but anyway.

And what about the timing of the payloads. Once things got moving you'd end up with traffic jams on the ground - people and companies wanting their load of X moved up. You'd have to wait on the carriage to complete it's round trip and get back down, possibly wait for it to be unloaded or serviced. They'd have to figure a way to have multiple cars running at the same time. A ribbon could probably take two cars, a round cable could take ?. Hmmmm, four round cables or two ribbon cables with a support structure between them could take four cars.

IF it ever becomes reality and is proved as useful as our dreamers think it would be I bet a second one gets built on the opposite side of the globe.

But that's forgetting the ultimate bone of contention about this whole idea ..... where will the thing be anchored? Can you image the turmoil, arguing, bribing and screaming that would go on to secure the anchorage in X country or Y country?

:-)

Hmmm, guess I just showed that I'm a bit of a nerd sometimes. :-) Oh well, I like me anyway. :-)
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According to Clarke, it needs to be atop a mountain on the equator to be most efficient. That should limit contention some. :-)
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The last thing that I had heard on this is that most of the technology already exists for this. The main thing holding it up is the development of long enough carbon nanotube cables. But I cannot say that I have been reading all the research or anything :-), just a nerd at heart and this is a really cool idea.

I had also heard that the trip would be a matter of something like 3 days and if they wanted to transport humans they would need to build shielded cars for the journey so you do not get cooked once you leave the atmosphere.
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All you need are some ball bearings and 40 weight oil. Its all ball bearings now a days.

sure, but they will probably make you step outside.
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Got the reference. :-)




And we've got more carbon nano tubes in my office than we know what to do with, maybe we should sell some ???
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