First look up the word geosynchronous. This planet ALSO spins.

There’s also a set of problems with the rate of work being done and with aerodynamic drag effects… if you have the materials to do it, there’s nothing more efficient.

With respect to weather, did you consider that it needn’t actually even touch the ground to work? It COULD simply hang above the worst of the weather, accessible to any decent airplane. Most of the modeling shows that it isn’t affected enough by terrestrial winds to matter, but I am not as certain that the conditions on this planet will remain so benign.

The most worrying aspect of the design is the orbital debris problem. We’ve left a lot of garbage in orbit. See, there IS a green aspect to this !

As for power, there’s heaps of that available out there. Much more than here. Much cheaper. Out there it is MASS that is costly and power that is cheap.

The real sticking point is getting the construction crews up there and getting the initial work done, and persuading someone to pay for the project.

respectfully
BJ

these materials would not only have to cope with vertical stress as with a tall building, but immense lateral stress too.

even if we had such a material, the whole idea doesn’t hold water. since objects closer to the earth have to travel faster to stay in orbit, the “counterweight” or furthest end of the elevator would actually be getting dragged around by the closer-in parts and would at the same time be dragged in towards the earth.

as for the saving of energy, it is true that an elevator arrangement would eliminate the need for the vessel to contain enough fuel to thrust not only the vessel but that same fuel off the surface of the earth. in the elevator concept, the thrusting capacity for the initial stage would remain on earth, so the vessel could be lighter. it will of course, still cost as much energy to launch a kilogram of matter into space as it would via rocket, only less kilograms would have to be launched.

a wikipedia featured article

The strengh of materials is almost there (carbon nanotubes). The understanding of power accumulations in the cables is not yet complete. Protecting the cable from orbital debris is a problem not yet addressed.

Actual cost for the electricity to lift something to orbit is measured in pennies (well probably dimes now, as we’re inflating every fiat currency like mad these days).

We are talking about 35000 Km of cable. It’s a long ride on the elevator, pack a lunch.

respectfully
BJ

How high does the world’s highest elevator go?

And why would that be?

Your religion is what it is. The reality I am trying to point out to YOU is that if we all adopt it roughly 5 Billion of the 6 Billion people on the planet will die… quickly.

Facing that reality I find religious anti-technology attitudes rather less than useful. The supernatural benefits are clearly (to me) the result of being raised in a tribal society and letting the weak die. Small, isolated and tightly bound as a result, and closely related to the bands of apes to whom we owe so much of our evolution.

Using food as medicine is accepted and acceptable… we pay the big pharma companies way to much to patch things up after the fact, but medicines have their use. Shall we deny antibiotics to a child and so condemn that child to death? Shall we accept far higher mortality, so that the survivors are the strongest?

What happened to the value of being smart along that hallowed road you follow? If we are able to save ourselves by using our big brains instead of our hardened muscles… is that not also a natural result? My understanding of Thermodynamics, Physics and Computers isn’t unnatural… it is a result of our society’s using and recording the results of our god given intelligence. If I were not to use it I would not be fulfilling my potential.

If you are saying there are too many of us? I agree. If you are simply railing against technology I can’t. Are a lot of people going to die as a result of the past century’s excesses? I don’t doubt it. I will however, fight to the death to prevent my civilization’s reverting to “primitive”.

It is a sin to eat from the tree of knowledge in some basic religions. Not mine. I want to know what the priests are really up to, and why the virgins had to be sacrificed.

respectfully
BJ

“While many of the primitive races studied have continued to thrive on the same soil through thousands of years, our American stock has declinded rapidly within a few centuries and in some localitites within a few decades. In the regions in which degeneration has taken place the animal stock has also declined…….No era in the long journey of mankind reveals in the skeletal remains such a terribly degeneration of teeth and bones as this brief modern period records. Must NATURE reject our vaunted culture and call back the more obdient primitives? The alternative seems to be a COMPLETE readjustment in accordance with the controlling forces of Nature.”…

…”Of course, using food as medicine is ancient. The pharmacopeia of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece and CHina as well as those of the Middle Ages was based on food. Only in this century has society become almost exclusively dependent on manufactured pills to cure our misery…”

..These words of a mining propector, spoken after twenty years among the native people of Ugnada, echo the sentiments of many people who have observed native cultures before the foods of modern commerce arrived: “The heaven of my choice in which to spend all eternity would be to live in Ugnada as the natives of Uganda lived before the coming of modern civilization”………

…..”The people of Hunza have lived in relative isolation high in Himalaya mountains for over 200 years, following a way of eating and thinking that has lenghtened their lives and reduced their susceptibility to the diseases of civilized man. In this tiny country many Hunzas live to be over 100 years of age, physically healthy and mentally alert. Men in their 90’s play polo and volleyball and father children. These sturdy people often walk over a hundred miles a day, go barefoot in the snow or swim in icy water. The secret of their healthy life is found in their simply and natural diet, vigorous outdoor life and freedom from mental worry. The mountain dwellers eat little meat but large amounts of WHOLE goat milk products..”

And another “uncivilised tribe of savages”…….The sturdiness of the child life permits children to play and frolic barefooted even in water running down from the glacier in the late evening’s chilly breezes, in weather that made us wear our overcoats and gloves and button our collars…”

….” The WISDOM of these people regarding Nature’s laws and their skill in the art of living comfortably with rugged Nature has been approached by few other tribes in the world. The sense of HONOUR among these tribes is so strong that practically all cabins, temporarily unoccupied due to the absence of the Indians on their hunting trip, were entirely unprotected by locks, and the valuables belonging to the indians were left in plain sight….”

…”Spiritual values dominate life. Part of the national holiday celebration each August was a song expressing the feeling of “one for all and all for one”. Price wrote: “One wonders if there is not something in the life-giving vitamins and minerals of the food that builds not only great physical structures within which their souls reside, but builds minds and hearts capable of a HIGHER type of manhood in which the MATERIAL values of life are made SECONDARY to individual CHARACTER” There was evidence of this throughout the WORLD…”

…….About this subject, Dr F.M. Ashley-Montagu, a world reowned anthropollgist and author of various popular and scholarly books, wrote in his article in the June 1940 issue of “Scientific Monthly”: The SocioBiology of Man: ‘In spite of our advances, we spiritually and as human beings are not the equal of the average Aboriginal or Eskimo-we are very definitly their inferiors. We lisp noble ideals and noble sentiments-the Australians and the Eskimos practice them-they neither write books nor lecture about them”…