Calling the Space Elevator 72
CornfedPig writes "SPACE.com has an article that suggests building an elevator to a 100,000 km-high penthouse could be possible within the next few years at a cost of about $5B US. Widespread availability of low-cost carbon nanotubes appears to be the gating factor. Existence of such an elevator could drop the cost of lifting things (satellites, people, CowboyNeal) into orbit to a couple of hundred dollars a pound. Anyone remember Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise?" Space elevator stories come along every few months; we never seem to be getting any closer to actually doing it. I imagine it will happen at some point in my lifetime, but...
Re:There's a reason we don't build them (Score:1, Insightful)
2. That makes a BIG navigation problem for all the satellites in low-earth orbit. Imagine a 36,000 KM cable going from the ground to Geosynchronous orbit, right through the path of thousands of assorted satellites, space junk, and the odd space station or two. All of the objects in low earth orbit will have a small, but ever present, chance of hitting our space elevator on each orbit.
We'd have to make a tough elevator cable and actively defend it from such debris.