From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Aug 12 2002 - 15:29:22 MDT
Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2188107.stm
> ...
> "Technology is now catching up with science fiction. It should be
> taken pretty seriously," said Brad Edwards of High Lift Systems.
>
> "The technology's not quite here, but in the next couple of years the
> technology could be ready to consider construction of the first space
> elevator."
> ...
I suspect that he is talking about using buckytubes as the construction
material. If so, I believe that he is over-optomistic. I'd put the
time-frame as more like 5-10 years before construction could start.
Early design work could start now, but it would be a mistake to invest
much before we know just how long a buckytube can be built, how many
layers we can get on each tube, etc. And, of course, what the final
characteristics are. I don't think that we can really generalize from
the current lab products. It could be either a lot better or a lot
worse than we know. (Do buckytubes in the presence of Ozone turn into
CO2 when irradiated with UV? We'd better know the answer not only to
this question, but to a lot of others before the plans are too detailed.)
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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