NPR Talks Skyhooks 328
David writes "NPR's Talk of the Nation this past week featured Brad Edwards, President of Carbon Designs Inc., to talk about their plans to develop an elevator that would lift people to an object orbiting in outer space. The project's homepage details their plans and ambitions. The discussion expands on callers' concerns about such problems as commercial airliners running into the super long cable or if it would act as a conduit for lightning."
wrong concerns (Score:3, Insightful)
People should be more worried about if this is the best way to spend money or not. Personally, I think it's a pretty sweet idea and I'd be totally for supporting it. Looks quite awesome, actually!
Re:wrong concerns (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless the pilot is a crazed Saudi with a taste for Flight Simulator...
Space Elevators... (Score:0, Insightful)
You can mod me any way you like but, anyone that invests in a space elevator deserves the loss that they are guaranteed!
Re:wrong concerns (Score:1, Insightful)
This still leaves the question of how to defend a very long, expensive and symbolic set of cables from attacks (either by terrorists or militaries), however.
Re:Cripes (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that most of the technical objections are not-too-hard-to-overcome engineering challenges, not showstoppers. If you're reading this and think you have a fatal flaw to the whole concept, and haven't spent months on it doing some calculations and reading papers, I'll take the opportunity to laugh at your idea now.
Protection is a non-issue (Score:4, Insightful)
simple to solve. Put the base in the ocean, and stick a carrier task force there to protect it.
We already have an example to follow. Fort Knox has a tank combat training ground there, and plenty of tanks stationed there permanently. Good luck trying to raid the place.
Terrorist attacks are dangerous because they could happen anywhere, but that doesn't mean that we can't make a single known place extremely secure from that sort of thing. If it is decided that no aircraft will approach within 100 miles of a space elevator, a single carrier task group could enforce that easily. Revenues from the space elevator would easily pay for the security force too, and it'll still be the cheapest way to get something into space.
Re:wrong concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, the very first use of the very first skyhook should be to build the *second* one. It only gets easier the more we do it, and boy, does taking an elevator beat strapping an explosion to your butt.
Here's to audacity and dreaming big dreams.
Re:Protection is a non-issue (Score:2, Insightful)
Once it's in service for a while, the 'new' factor is gone and it's just another large structure, less suited for a terrorist target than most. No one really sweats a terr attack at Johnson Space Center after all.
Re:wrong concerns (Score:2, Insightful)
And what if he is? The elevator is in the middle of a frickin' 4000 square mile no-fly zone. They'd see him coming for several hours before he got there. There would be loads of time to, um, dissuade him from his course.
My standard space elevator comment... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:wrong concerns (Score:3, Insightful)
This proposed space elevator is supposedly around 400 miles from any commercial air lanes. Long before a plane actually enters a no-fly zone it can be intercepted and questioned as to why it's even getting close to the elevator. Also, if an aircraft carrier were stationed close to the elevator they would:
a) have nothing better to do than watch for planes getting close
b) they would always have it in the back of their minds that a plane could be used to attack the ribbon
c) they would have no other distractions in the airspace for hundreds of miles
There is no reason to think that, under these circumstances, highly trained fighter pilots flying heavily armed modern fighter craft would be unable to shoot down any civilian aircraft that strayed too close and couldn't be convinced to peacefully leave. For that matter, there is no reason to think, now that we have seen them used as weapons, that the US Airforce couldn't do the same thing in the continental US should another situation like 9/11 occur again.
-GameMaster
Re:wrong concerns (Score:2, Insightful)
Keep pushing new things