to geosync? ya right...

im sorry, but your not going to build a tower 1,836,218 kilometers high... (and then some.)

the energy you are going to need to send up an "elevator" is going to be no less then sending up a rocket. AND i seriously doubt that there would be enough of anything to build that relativly stable. not to mention you would have to replace billions in dollars of satalites that would be in the thing's way.

plus some guy is going to blow it up from the base and the whole thing will come tumbling down...

Like I said you will burn up in the atmosphere. It will take them years to figure out how to get it to work maybe decades. I don't think they are going to figure it out in this lifetime unless we find some new technology to help us out. The higher you go the colder it gets and then in the atmosphere you burn up. Also there is a lack of oxygen so you would have to have a huge tank of oxygen in the elevator to last. lol I can imagine, someone halfway to space when they get stuck. "Honey, I just wanted to call to tell you I might be late for dinner"

I read an article in a science magazine about this a few years ago. Let me see if I can smooth out a few wrinkles in the posters' brains.

First of all, there is no "ring of fire" as you so call it. As was mentioned in an earlier post, the only reason things burn up while entering Earth's atmosphere is because of the extreme friction resulting from falling at high speeds through the mesosphere.


That is why Burt Rutan's Space Ship One does not need heavy thermal shielding for reentering Earth's atmosphere (it instead uses a wing technique that allows it to lose enough speed to safely reenter the Earth's atmosphere without creating enough friction to cause the vehicle to be incinerated).

The tether would be composed of thousands of carbon nanotubes, which are able to hold enormous amounts of weight. These nanotubes would be woven one at a time by robotic "rovers" that would roll up and down the tether, adding an extra thread each time it went up or down. Although this would take awhile, eventually the tether would be strong enough to hold a lift that could carry something as gigantic as a space shuttle up to the counterweight spacestation, from which it would be launched, greatly reducing the amount of fuel necessary for it to lift off (those savings, in and of themselves, would make the cost of making such an elevator worthwhile). Elevators, whether self-powered or powered by a current running through the tether cable, would be able to move at enormous speeds, yet avoid being burned up in the atmosphere when going to or from the counterweight.

Now, the counterweight for the tether wouldn't fall to Earth if the tether snapped - that would defeat the whole purpose of it's being a counterweight. It would fly off into space and would eventually be retrieved, although it may be difficult and take quite a bit of time.

Since the elevator itself wouldn't be run by the complicated and unreliable mechanics that normal elevators are run by, they would rarely break down (and would never break down at all, if they were regularly given maintenance). The elevator itself wouldn't require any more energy to lift an object clear to the counterweight than it would take to lift the same object on an elevator completely within Earth's atmosphere the same distance. The energy required to lift the object will only decrease as the craft gets higher (since gravitational pull will decrease), and going down, little or no energy would be required at all, save to hold the elevator back so it does not descend too fast.

Contrary to what many of you have been saying, while there would be risks involved, as there always are, this space elevator would be a much more efficient and much safer means of transporting people and equipment to outer space. What would you prefer to use to get into space - an elevator that pulled itself up along an anchored tether, or a gigantic bomb that exploded downward to push you up?

In any case, I doubt anyone here has much to worry about at the moment, since such a technology, if it's ever attempted, won't be economically feasible for a few decades, at least.

I'm not a science goof nor am I slightly interested in science, but this all seems like a nice little fairy tail story to read to the kiddies at bedtime. Honestly, this whole idea sounds quite ridiculous. Firstly, the money spend on this project would be a total waste, and it would be A LOT of money, no doubt. The issue of the elevator breaking down would be troublesome indeed, due to the fact that many of our aviating devices cannot fly at such a incredible altitude. It would be extremely difficult to fix a problem at the crest of our atmosphere and we would need to develop a craft that is capable of flying at such an altitude, which I believe hasn't been done nor will be in the near future. (Maybe I'm wrong there, but hey, like I said, I'm no science goof).

Ultimately what we're looking at is a huge costly project that will have little benefit, only providing us an opportunity to say "look what we can do". Right now the whole idea is what I mentioned earlier, a fairy tale. It would be hard to even write a realistic fiction on it...

But hey, this is what our society has become. We live in a world of competition. Everyone comes up with new ideas that try to out-do everyone. Heck, if we do ever make this pathetic elevator, the next thing we'll try to do is extend it to Mars, so all the little martians can travel back and forth...

No it hasn't been done, one of the main reasons is because there isn't anything in that high up for the craft to ride on. However who says you would need to fix it with an airplain (of sorts)? You could just have another ellevator car go up after it, it after all wouldn't be tradational with pullies and the works. It woule much similar to an inch worm crawling up a building.

And just think, not so long ago some people thought a network of computers all linked together across the world was a stupid idea. Why would a person want to allow some other person's information to pass through their computer system and use their resources, free of charge? It's called the Internet.

Where would we be if we didn't explore some of these stupid ideas?

elevinmil, did you even read any of the posts before yours? I mentioned in the post right above yours what the benefits would be - millions of dollars saved in fuel required to lift off, heat shielding would no longer be an issue, and those two things are the main (if not only, thus far) causes of failed manned space missions.

And in order to fix a stopped lift, all one would have to do would be send up another lift after it, have some "spacewalkers" repair the lift, and then you're good to go again. Of course, that's assuming a lift would break down, which, considering how much service the lift would have, wouldn't be a problem, since it would be constantly being upgraded, repaired, etc. before being used.

Trust me, it WILL breakdown. I don't care how much maintenance it gets, it will still break down at some stage. Take for example the space shuttle program, how many problems has that had? They spends millions on checking, testing and checking again, but being we are human, we make mistakes from time to time.