Comments on: The First Elevator That Can Ride to Outer Space

By: Your Mom

Your Mom — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:52:30 +0000

“the antifungal force from the earthâ€™s rotation.”

Great. I was worried about fungus on the ribbon. Nice reporting, dipshit.

P.S. Simon C, if you’re not a brilliant troll and are actually an engineer, I’m terrified. What university gave you your degree? And what company do you engineer for? I want to avoid your products at all costs, short your stock, and warn people away.

By: Steve A

Steve A — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 19:33:26 +0000

The hurdle of the ribbon has been overcome. They have only to produce a continuous ribbon large enough for their needs. The real problem is supplying power for the elevator. A cable would be to long and heavy and sufficient batteries would also be far to bulky & heavy to carry. The answer lies in a power beam of some sort. This problem too is being overcome by a consortium of universities and government labs. Maybe within our lifetime?

By: The First Space Elevator Now Possible With Revolutionary New Material | Let Your Opinion Be Heard.

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:20:01 +0000

[...] I featured in this site about The First Elevator That Can Ride to Outer Space, in which according to Michael Laine the real critical test was on making a string strong enough. [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 03:31:55 +0000

Simon,

The atmosphere does move in relation to the Earth’s rotation. If it didn’t the smog over China wouldn’t be able to sit over just China, and the entire atmosphere would whip around us at speeds to outmatch any tornado.

The ribbon itself would act just like any mountain that pokes its way through the clouds. It would be just another object moving through the sky, and would give no energy to the atmosphere to allow it to escape.

By: simon clegg BSc

simon clegg BSc — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:58:51 +0000

hi there. I am an engineer and product designer, so a complete novice when it comes to the physics of space and all!
But i could not sleep last night due to worrying about how this may effect our world. I thought of this idea many many years ago and think i have it jotted down in one of my scribble books somewhere, but that is bye the bye.

Anyway to get to the point. If I am getting this right, the world with its surrounding atmosphere is that similar to a bubble in a vacuum? And as we know when a pin hole is made in a vessel containing air that is surrounded by a vacuum, the air is sucked out of it.
So without any metaphores, and keeping it simple, we are going to have a wacking great diameter of a cable or maybe a few of them tied to the earths surface and protruding through our protective atmosphere! Now I know the earth spins at some thousands of miles per hour, of which I am unsure, so this huge diameter of a cable or cables are going to be slicing through our atmosphere and whatever other layers at thousands of miles per hour. Now will that not leave wake or some sort of tear as it moves? Will this then allow our air to be sucked out? Do the protective layers that surround our world move relative to the spin of the earth? Is there anybody out there that can answer these questions based on solid factual proof? Surely these quetions have been asked and answered in some detail before worrying about the functional problems; or have they? I do hope that someone can explain this to me.
Kind regards
Your worried person on earth.
Simon C

By: SpaceElevator Guy (Michael Laine)

SpaceElevator Guy (Michael Laine) — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:42:11 +0000

Thanks for your interest in the project. I am not sure why, but the video that you saw is not “news”, it is about 2 years old. For the full story take a look at the interview i gave: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/05/08/popular-space-elevator-video-not-news-says-liftport-founder/

While I appreciate your enthusiasm, we have actually proceeded much further than this video suggests – and had a huge setback last year as well.

Take care. mjl