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CNN is reporting that several groups have taken up the race to build the first space elevator. Groups in Japan, Europe, and the United States are all working on projects. NASA has also reportedly sweetened the pot by offering $4 million to the first group that develops a workable plan. The Japanese group has set a goal of 2030 as the date to begin construction.
We do not have enough junk floating in space, we need some actually attached to the planet.
The one issue I have with building a Space Elevator at this stage is that our basic infrastructure in space is minimal at best. Building something of that magnitude would require more resources that we have right now. We can't even keep the shuttle program or the space station on track and we want to tackle this now?!? BTW, I am in favor of it once we are ready. I have a good idea of what would be required to make one and we are not ready at this stage. Ask again in about 100 years or so.
Edited to fix a typo.
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The one issue I have with building a Space Elevator at this stage is that our basic infrastructure in space is minimal at best. Building something of that magnitude would require more resources that we have right now. We can't even keep the shuttle program or the space station on track and we want to tackle this now?!? BTW, I am in favor of it once we are ready. I have a good idea of what would be required to make one and we are nto ready at this stage. Ask again in about 100 years or so.
The only resource-problems involved in the shuttle-spaceplane program are technological--we're behind schedule because we can't make it work right now; we've tapped out on our current intellectual-cum-technological capacity. The ISS doesn't follow to schedule because, other than Japan and the UK, the other partner countries are slow to keep their promises--bare truth.
NASA routinely encourages outside governmental and nongovernmental groups to work on cool projects like the Elevator because it does three things: takes some of the pressure off them; keeps cool ideas in the forefront; and almost always provides insight or technology usable in other areas.
The thing about the Space Elevator--there's only one tether system theorized to 100% work: nanotubes made of buckyballs. this is beyond any science and manufacturing process we currently have. While some areas of science and technology advance at staggering rates, others, like this, will take a lot longer. I think Sharoth is right about the 100-year comment.
~shrugs~ I agree with Andrew about the issues with the space shuttle and the ISS. However, that just underscores one of the basic problems. We are NOT putting enough cash into the space program. If we actually put a few 100 billion into it, we could accomplish a lot and it would pay off manyfold. Unfortunatly, there are people that do not want us in space and have been taking many steps to hamstring the space program and the private sector. ~gets off my soapbox and stops my rant~ Sorry!
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...We are NOT putting enough cash into the space program. If we actually put a few 100 billion into it, we could accomplish a lot and it would pay off manyfold. Unfortunatly, there are people that do not want us in space and have been taking many steps to hamstring the space program and the private sector. ~gets off my soapbox and stops my rant~ Sorry!
YES! More money to NASA, please! And, sadly, you're very, very right--there are educated, smart, people in power who don't like the very idea of NASA, and see the space program as a complete and total waste... :-(
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~shrugs~ I agree with Andrew about the issues with the space shuttle and the ISS. However, that just underscores one of the basic problems. We are NOT putting enough cash into the space program. If we actually put a few 100 billion into it, we could accomplish a lot and it would pay off manyfold. Unfortunatly, there are people that do not want us in space and have been taking many steps to hamstring the space program and the private sector. ~gets off my soapbox and stops my rant~ Sorry!
Silly man.......a few hundred billion would require us to stop warmongering. Nobody wants that. Space is gonna have to wait until we can finally bully around the world enough that everyone hates us. We're close but there is still work to do!
;PSeriously though, I really wish we a a country and others around the world would just get together and work towards some cool ideas like space travel, clean energy, teleportation technology, using cloning methods to bring back the Moa bird(solving some hunger issues also...IT'S A GIANT CHICKEN!!!) and a few other recently extinct species.....ETC....
If only we could come up with $700 billion to bail out Nasa. Hmmmm.
Well said poodle.. well said.. :)
Perhaps the point is that they need to concentrate on the research behind this idea so that when they do have the resources to build it they'll also have the technical advances necessary to actually be able to do it.
Well its an idea after all.
(My spelling is getting worse...)
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I read an article a year or two back about a Congressman who had a Bill he wanted to put in about building a sort of space elevator. The other end was going to have a type of solar energy collector on it, and the power would be transmitted back down via the tether. The idea sounded really cool at the time.
I read an article a year or two back about a Congressman who had a Bill he wanted to put in about building a sort of space elevator. The other end was going to have a type of solar energy collector on it, and the power would be transmitted back down via the tether. The idea sounded really cool at the time.
A congressman who watches Gundam 00?!
Cool!Sorry couldn't resist at least it beats the microwave satellite that beams power down...
I would like to see this happen. After watching NOVA I really wanted to join the race. What was really cool was a student here also saw the show and he did join the race! Wonder how he is doing...
The solar energy collector either in orbit or at the Lagrange regions has actually been proposed since at least the 1970s. It would require long term investment (as would a space elevator) but the long term payoffs in many areas of endeavour would be enormous and well worth the investment.
China's gonna win.
Not saying that because of any nationalistics or pessimistics. I'm saying that because when I worked in an office of the Journal of Physical Chemistry, specifically the office that saw all of the incoming nanotech advancements, China consistently submitted about 60% of the nanotubual awesome we accepted. Most of their work was head and shoulders above anything being submitted by the US or Europe. Only India came close in terms of advances.
Except that one time when a team from the US cooled a small molecule down sufficiently that they could look at it with a scanning-tunneling electron microscope to observe its structure directly. Hard to top that.