Plenty of that ’sunlight’ stuff here on earth surface, come to that.

True, but up there it shines 24 hours a day. And surprisingly, it’s more efficient and cost-effective to beam it down 36,000 km by microwave than to push it through a 3,600 km wire from Arizona to NYC. Finally, real-estate costs are a lot lower up there: zero.

However, there’s some truth in what you say. If Nanosolar really produces photovoltaics in vast quantities for $1/watt, we can put them on all our roofs and get more power than we do now from oil. I have a nice 50 sq-m roof facing directly south, just right for solar.

P.S. How sad is it that I know that his “space elevator” concept came from one of the episodes? At least I don’t recall which season it’s on …

Phoenician in a time of Romans said (12/27/07 at 0:41):

People are getting the technical details wrong and laughing at their own mistaken assumptions. The centre of mass would indeed be in geosync orbit, meaning that there would be a counter-weight cable extending further out – possibly further than the 22,000 miles to Earth as it might be thinner.

Closer to true than most of the comments here, but not exactly. There will be much more mass above GEO than below it because the centrifugal force acting on the mass above GEO has to balance the force of gravity acting on the mass below GEO. It’s closer to correct to say that the center of weight of the SE is at geosynchronous orbit, where weight is the result of gravity or centrifugal force acting on mass.

Just to correct some of the other misconceptions, current estimates for the construction of the first SE are in the range of $5-10B. It would be capable of lifting one 5-ton payload to GEO per day at a cost of about $200/kg. (Current cost using rockets is about $10,000/kg.) The second SE would cost substantially less, maybe $2B, because we could use the first one to raise it. The first won’t be built until 10-20 years after someone figures out how to make a sufficiently-strong CNT cable, but soon after that there will be a dozen or so. They will be used to build multiple-gigawatt solar power satellites that could eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels for energy.

It’s unlikely in the extreme that the SE will be built by the US government. My favorite candidates are Qatar, Singapore, and Richard Branson.

And yes, we’ve heard all the jokes about elevator music, kids pushing the buttons for all million floors, etc. etc.

It also would have to be placed at the equator and AFAIK the USA has no territory which is at the equator, right? So it would have to be an international cooperation anyway.

Pfft, fuck that. After Iraq, we take Ecuador. Because of, um…freedom or something.

Au contraire mon ami, the space elevator dovetails nicely with Jacob’s vision from the Old Testament:
“…He came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!…”

Someone should point out that it’s not working.

Phoenician in a time of Romans said (12/27/07 at 0:41):

People are getting the technical details wrong and laughing at their own mistaken assumptions. The centre of mass would indeed be in geosync orbit, meaning that there would be a counter-weight cable extending further out – possibly further than the 22,000 miles to Earth as it might be thinner.

Closer to true than most of the comments here, but not exactly. There will be much more mass above GEO than below it because the centrifugal force acting on the mass above GEO has to balance the force of gravity acting on the mass below GEO. It’s closer to correct to say that the center of weight of the SE is at geosynchronous orbit, where weight is the result of gravity or centrifugal force acting on mass.

Just to correct some of the other misconceptions, current estimates for the construction of the first SE are in the range of $5-10B (approximately the cost of the Big Dig or a month of Iraq). It would be capable of lifting one 5-ton payload to GEO per day at a cost of about $200/kg. (Current cost using rockets is about $10,000/kg.) The second SE would cost substantially less, maybe $2B, because we could use the first one to raise it. The first won’t be built until 10-20 years after someone figures out how to make a sufficiently-strong CNT cable, but soon after that there will be a dozen or so. They will be used to build multiple-gigawatt solar power satellites that could eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels for energy.

It’s unlikely in the extreme that the SE will be built by the US government. My favorite candidates are Qatar, Singapore, and Richard Branson.

And yes, we’ve heard all the jokes about elevator music, kids pushing the buttons for all million floors, etc. etc.

That’s why I am proposing that we build a space escalator. It’d be less vulnerable to attack (trust me), a lot more impressive, and think about how many Slinkys could fit on it!

Isn’t that what was said about the Santa Monica Freeway?

Arthur C. Clarke wrote about it back before any of us was born. The engineering is there, it’s the proper materials we lack. Until we figure out how to properly mine the asteroids for fresh water, there won’t be any economic rationale.

And then, won’t we be sorry we laffed at teh Brave Pioneers?!?

Of course, this is the silliest sort of narcissistic fantasy, but then, if “silly narcissistic fantasy” wasn’t one of modern Republicanism’s most valuable products, how do you explain Donald Trump or Newt Gingrich?