Stairway to heaven

London Telegraph ^

[Grendel9]

Sure glad to hear they've allotted for avoiding space debris! <>g<> You ingenues ready to try for that 50 grand prize?

[satchmodog9]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1490794/posts

[manwiththehands]

... three-feet across but just half the width of a pencil. ...

That's a fat pencil!

[Charles Henrickson]

[SouthernFreebird]

I'd hate to be in it during a power failure.

[Iscool]

I'm not interested til they get a casino on the moon...Talk about a boring vacation...May as well just hang out in the back yard...At least there's some shade there...

[hang 'em]

Wait 'til a muslim flies into it... Mama Mia!

[tet68]

The unit only weighs 7 tons but can carry several people
and 13 tons of cargo for a trip of several days duration?

Not possible.

[Boundless]

> That would open up the possibility of tourists ...

We can hardly imagine what it will open up.

Nuclear power for one. Radwaste (and severe hazmats
generally) would no longer be a problem - just run 'em
up the rope and let 'em loose when their arc takes them
right into the Sun.

Another - global warming - if it's real, we can put
huge thin sun shades in between the Earth and Sun, at
one of the Lagrangian points.

[Charles Henrickson]

So this elevator "would crawl up a single cable into space over several days." How would people be able to not start up conversations for that long? Would they be allowed to make eye contact or would they have to look up at the ceiling? What if there's a pretty girl on the elevator? And would they pipe in Muzak? These are the things that would have to be worked out.

[Charles Henrickson]

And would your ears pop?

[inquest]

If they construct this thing, that means "The Man" will have a significant amount of control over who does and does not go into space. Personally, I'd rather our resources instead go towards developing more efficient rocket designs.

[inquest]

Radwaste (and severe hazmats generally) would no longer be a problem - just run 'em up the rope and let 'em loose when their arc takes them right into the Sun.

You'd still need to give them a pretty substantial boost in order to reduce their solar orbital speed to the point where they'd fall into the sun. The earth moves in its orbit at 18 miles per second. You'd have to have a pretty long moment-arm above the surface to get it swinging that fast.

[Tribune7]

It makes me wonder.

[GoDuke]

That's too much "Girl from Ipanema" for me.

[Westlander]

Kennedy as the operator and the Cindbag as the passenger.....then the virgin hunter can crash.

[Palladin]

Didn't they try this before...in Babel?

[SamAdams76]

I'd hate to be in it during a hurricane.

[Blowtorch]

Not possible.

You sure?

"In one experiment, a sheet of nanotubes one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair could support 50,000 times its own mass."