Topic awaiting preservation: Stairway to Heaven

Ooooooooo they are having a space elevator conference and I think this should really take off - lots of good stuff here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/spacedocumentary/story/0,2763,1041360,00.html

quote:

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Engineers say that recent advances in materials science - particularly in the development of carbon nanotubes - mean that such a system, which first gained widespread attention when the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke described it in his 1979 novel Fountains of Paradise, is no longer pure science fiction.

Mr Clarke - who once said a space elevator would only be built "about 50 years after everyone stops laughing" - was due to address the scientists at the Santa Fe conference today by satellite link from his home in Sri Lanka.

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and this struck me:

quote:

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One unlikely problem could be capturing the public's imagination. "When we actually start launching this it's going to be kind of boring," Dr Edwards said. "There's no smoke, there's no pillars of fire and there's no loud rumbling noises. There's just this thing that slowly ascends the ribbon into space."

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Well I've been excited for a while now

I heard a radio programme on it earlier this year and developments are coming thick and fast in this field. It also seems to be cropping up in a lot of sci-fi these days (I think it fetaures prominently in Peter Hamilton's books and gets mentioned in some of Alistair Reynold's too I think) - thats pos. the way to change people's minds

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

That's just fantastic !

I only read this novel years ago, but if I remember well, Arthur C. Clarke also described this system in "3001, the final odissey" (in which Dave Bowman reappears in this new and complew world...). There was a complete ring in the space around Earth, with housings, companies, connected to Earth by elevators. He evocated carbon as well. I now realize now how much of a genius he is (was ?)... The only problem seems to be to compensate the acceleration on Earth, and to compensate the void while in space. It is not that flying around is displeasing, but it is not that easy when you have to go to the toilets hmmm ? I'm sure our ingeneers will find the answer to the problem... And I just hope to be able to use such an elevator during my lifetime. Ahh coming closer from the moon



[This message has been edited by Moon Shadow (edited 09-13-2003).]

Was? He ain't dead yet!