From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Tue Aug 20 2002 - 02:07:59 MDT
--> Max More
> >>http://www.msnbc.com/news/796283.asp?0na=x22136F6
> >
> >The article also says:
> >"It's a 15-year effort that started yesterday," Michael Laine, president
> >and chief executive officer of the company, said during the
> second day of
> >the meeting.
> >
> >How does this square with extropian predictions? I think it overly
> >optimistic. I would assume that other people expect the singularity
> >before 15 years.
>
> I would assign a fairly high probability to this project taking more than
> 15 years. I will be disappointed and moderately surprised if it
> isn't done
> within 25 years. Caveat: I haven't really sat down and thought carefully
> through plausible scenarios for the development of the space elevator. As
> for the singularity, I find that beast far more amorphous and
> blurred than
> most here. Still, I would have to say that a space elevator would be
> constructed before we could say we were in or entering a singularity.
Hold up here. Wouldn't be easier at the moment to ("just") start running a
rail gun up the side of a big equatorial mountain for cheaper ground to
orbit stuff? I mean, if we're talking large up front capital investment in
systems and all that. Getting up does seem to be a costlier process than
getting down again...
I seem to recall someone had one of these mountainside railguns in their
hard sci-fi novel. Can't recall who. I'm sure one of the less busy list math
types could tell me why this is/isn't a viable option :)
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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