Space Elevator approaches the border ...

[TheTraveler]

Originally Posted by The Poet

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.

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.