Telescope Reviews: Japan to build Space Elevator

There's an outfit in seattle that's been mining the market of gullible investors on the space elevator concept for a few years. It sounds great in science fiction, and, in theory, the physics works, sort of, as long as you assume 'perfect conditions'. In practise, the technology advances need to make it workeable, never mind practical, suggest that the transporter out of star trek will come first.

The folks that want to hype the space elevator concept get all excited talking about nanotubes, but, they haven't done the math on the subject in general. In practise, nanotubes exist in some carefully controlled laboratory environments, but, those that exist, need a tensile strength improvement of at least an order of magnitude before they actually become strong enough to work for the space elevator concept. This ofc assumes the aerodynamic problems of these things getting whipped around by the winds at altitude can be overcome, most of the hypsters tend to disregard this as trivial. They also tend to discount the effects of the thing being hit by the occaisional meteorite blasting it's way thru the vicinity, or perish the thought, some of the junk we have lofted into orbit over the years.

Then comes the minor detail of powering the climbers. The hypsters love to draw the picture showing the cable hanging strait up and down, but, again, that's just because they never really looked at the physics involved. The climbers need to be accelerated as they climb, that puts a lateral force on the cable, which is NOT rigid. So, it's going to end up swinging back and forth a bit, and when you work out the forces, and the waves that'll end up in the cable from those forces, the conclusion is, the cable will be moving a LOT. But, somehow, from thousands of kilometers below, power is going to be beamed up to the climbers, and magically hit whatever reciever they are using, WITHOUT hitting the cable and damaging it.

The funny part of the whole space elevator concept is, once you figure out the mechanism of transferring that quantity of power from the ground, to the climbers, and doing it in such a manner that you can hit the moving target with the precision required, that's when you realize, why even bother with the cable?

The space elevator will NEVER happen, for that simple reason. Solve the problem of transferring power to the climbers, and you have solved the problem of power to winged vehicles, which dont need the cable. The cable is the larger of the technological hurdles, and the most fragile once deployed. it's also quite unnecessary. The fundamental key to the space elevator, after solving the problem of tensile strength on the cable, is solving the power transfer problem. Once the latter is solved, the former becomes irrelavent. The same power transfer solution used to power the climbers on the cable, can power vehicles that dont rely on the cable, and all the technological and engineering risk associated with it.