The structure would be so large that it would require grabbing an asteroid and dragging it into Earth orbit to act as the counterweight for holding up the elevator. Oh, I should read the whole article 1st.
That sounds harder to do than building the eleavator. Yeah let's just go pull and astroid outa the sky.
thanks for the ping abigail2...that's interesting. It's amazing how those nanotubes would be so thin and yet very strong.
http://www.space.com/astronotes/astronotes.html October 6, 2003
A bill before the U.S. House of Representatives includes some $2.5 million in research funds to further study the space elevator idea. If authorized, the money would assist in engineering assessments, developing databases, and address other critical issues regarding the concept.
The space elevator is envisioned as a carbon-nanotube ribbon stretching from the Earth into space. If proven practical, the elevator would allow for easy transport of spacecraft, as well as tourists, and at a fraction of the cost of lifting payloads off the Earth today.
"The funding, endorsed by NASA, is for critical engineering on a program that has received very favorable technical reviews. It is part of a visionary space program with economically measurable returns," Brad Edwards, Director of Research at the Institute for Scientific Research (ISR) in Fairmont, West Virginia, told SPACE.com.
Money to move forward on the space elevator notion is being supported by Congressman Alan Mollohan, a Democrat from West Virginia.
"The Space Elevator is a concept that seems like science fiction but one that, successfully developed, would revolutionize access to space. It is an idea with far-reaching implications and it deserves to be seriously explored," Mollohan said.