A JAPANESE construction firm claims it could execute an out-of-this-world plan to put tourists in space within 40 years by building a lift that stretches a quarter of the way to the moon.

Obayashi Corp claims it could use carbon nanotube technology, which is more than 20 times stronger than steel, to build a lift shaft 96,000km above the Earth.

The company said it would carry up to 30 passengers at a time and travel at a speed of 200km/h for a week, stopping off at a station at 36,000km.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/going-up-japan-builder-eyes-space-elevator-20120223-1toy2.html

http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2012/02/22/obayashi-corp-plans-36000-km-space-elevator/

http://www.news.com.au/technology/firm-floats-plan-for-96000km-lift-into-space/story-e6frfro0-1226278956044

I'm more interested in the end goal than the method atm.

Space tethers have been well-researched for 20 or more years. I guess ultimately they have limited practical use in a commercial sense.

The best use I've heard of for tethers is to accelerate objects which are in space by spinning one object around another (i.e., like giving a kid a dizzy-wizzy) and then severing the tether at the right time to send the high velocity object out on a designated route.

I'd prefer an escalator tbh

every couple of years there pops up a story of how someone is going to build a carbon nanotube space tether... which tends to make me skeptical when i see yet another one.

having a space tether doesn't magically give you an energy-free elevator to space. if you want to lift mass into space you still have to overcome gravity.

And you still need energy before the geostationary altitude to raise the platform/gondola/elevator. Once you're past the geostationary point, you would theoretically be able to gain speed by way of centrifugal force, am I right?

purely theoretical lift systems do use a lot less energy. they don't really lift anything though, except my eyebrows.

õ_õ

How does the weight 'fall down' when it's outside the pull of our gravity?
Shame Arthur C Clarke will never see it happen.

How does the weight 'fall down' when it's outside the pull of our gravity?

you don't need assistance getting outside the pull of gravity, you need assistance getting to that point in your climb "up". the counterweight wouldn't be efficient to start with, but would be significantly more effective as you reached the top. there are other tricks you can do with leavers to make the "fall" of the counterweight more efficient, like using multiple stages and keeping the counterweights close to the ground.

I don't think you're really getting the whole space elevator thing. Its not like a cubby house where you can have a counterweight.

... thanks hoggy, I was struggling to see the difference.

what would be stopping you putting a pulley at the geostationary point as long as the centripetal forces holding the elevator tether outstretched generated enough force to counteract the combined weight of the elevator + counterweights?

You do know what happened last time they tried something like this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel

Oh dear, in the book I'm reading, revolutionaries blew off the anchor of a space elevator, causing the diamond cable to fall and loop around the planet twice, the second time around falling with such force that it made canyons and caused sonic booms to flatten everything in either direction. Now I'm afraid of awesome elevators.

Red Mars was one of my favourite books :)

Got stuck on Blue as he was spending 50+ pages describing lichen and moss, etc.

Red Mars was one of my favourite books :)

Got stuck on Blue as he was spending 50+ pages describing lichen and moss, etc.

I'm on the third now, Red was definitely my favourite, whereas the others continue on with the story in a cleaner but less exciting way. More like wrapping things up.

And I think I know where you meant with the lichin :P, though I really enjoy the 'getting life growing on mars' and natural selection concept, so liked reading that. The landscape descriptions are really repetitive and less interesting to me though, my eyes tend to glaze at over those points now. I do hope that people don't get so antsy about the 'pristine naturalness of mars' if we manage to get there to settle it. There's likely some several quatillion planets to explore and get info from, but it may never happen if the human race doesn't get out there and survive first.

One thing that's annoying, as per usual with old sci fi (though not as bad, given that these were written actually pretty recently, in the 90s) is the underestimation of the power of information technology. People on Mars would, I imagine, be able to have a very decent knowledge and connection to Earth, if only through technologies such as street view, google earth, digitial tv shows, social networking, etc. Without having left Australia, just for the sake of the Internet, I don't feel terribly disconnected and unconcerned with the rest of the planet and humanity, it all seems pretty much one big deal, which especially seemingly arises as you get a grasp on the astronomical realities of humanity's predicament. Maybe it's a mindset thing, but I doubt that future generations on a planet only a few lightminutes away would feel all that disconnected from here, and vice versa. Similarly I expect that they'd still be hooked on the same media, still interested in Terran history as much as we might be with say ancient Greeks, and considering it a part of themselves in the same inevitable way. With regular travel possible between, even without being the one taking the travel, it can still feel very connected.

just shoot rockets into space at the moon with tourists strapped to the outside, still works pretty good

just shoot rockets into space at the moon with tourists strapped to the outside, still works pretty good

Your idea is bad and you should feel bad :P

There are plenty of Square Telecommunication Manholes and dickloads of Rectangular ones.

It's technically possible to have a station in geostationary orbit with a cable running up to it - however using 'carbon nanotubes' is not possible at this stage because you cannot create large structures with nanotubes yet.

Not to mention they are farken expensive... but then again they did give themselves 30-35 years for these limitations to be overcome and then build it.