“A revolutionary way to send cargo into space, the LiftPort Space Elevator will consist of a carbon nanotube composite ribbon eventually stretching some 62,000 miles from earth to space. The LiftPort Space Elevator will be anchored to an offshore sea platform near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, and to a small man-made counterweight in space. Mechanical lifters are expected to move up and down the ribbon, carrying such items as people, satellites and solar power systems into space.”
February 13, 2006: “…LiftPort successfully launched an observation and communication platform a full mile in the air and maintained it in a stationary position for more than six hours while robotic lifters climbed up and down a ribbon attached to the platform. The platform, a proprietary system that the company has named “HALE” (High Altitude Long Endurance), was secured in place by an arrangement of high altitude balloons, which were also used to launch it. The robotic lifters measured five feet, six inches and climbed to a height of more than 1500 feet, surpassing its last test record by more than 500 feet.”
You gotta wonder about stuff like this. Is it possible? Is it a scam? (It’s a ‘C’ corporation, so they’re looking for lots of investors — Otherwise it would have been set up as an LLC.) They’ve made it up 1500 feet or a bit more than a quarter mile. To be successful, the orbiting anchor of such an elevator would have to be in a geosynchronous orbit, or around 36,000km up in the air. In other words, they’ve made it 0.001% of the way there so far. :-) Another way of thinking about this is the speed the elevator would have to reach. The fastest elevator in the world right now runs at around a kilometer a minute, or 60Kph. At this speed it would take about 600 hours to get from the earth to the anchor — That’s 25 days. Of course most orbits are much closer. The space station, for example is at 345km, so only 6 hours away.
Anyway…seems like a pie-in-the-sky idea to me. So much to go wrong and so little one can do about it.
I’ve been thinking more about this, and the technical problems are really outstanding. The amount of energy required to keep the damn counterweight in a geosynchronus orbit alone is astounding. Any force at all on the cable, whether by wind, dew collecting on it and adding additional mass, the elevator and its content, etc., acts to pull the counterweight back to earth by slowing it down. Absolute ridiculousness.
I am glad you are keeping an open mind on the subject, Peter, and thinking for yourself.
Keep in mind that when add ‘something’ to the bottom it does act to drag it out of orbit – bu this is balanced by the counterweight on the other end.