Japanese construction giant Obayashi announces plans to have a space elevator up and running by 2050

[EvacX]

[QUOTE=O'Neil;46053800]I hate that stomach feeling you get when a lift starts to move up or down but having that for 7 days? Geez.[/QUOTE]

It won't (de)accelerate for 7 days straight, so you won't feel a thing...

[Eila]

[QUOTE=LMB10;46054678]That's cool and all... But would look fucking ugly.[/QUOTE]

I think it'd be cool as hell to be a few kilometers away from one. Watching something that tall reaching into the sky would be awesome.

[Corn]

I wish I could buy Obayashi stocks right now

[krassell]

[QUOTE=Mezzokoko;46053853]This seems like the kinda structure where you don't wanna have any kidnapped planes flying around :v:[/QUOTE]

I don't have any numbers, but if we're talking carbon nanotubes here, then I'm fairly sure they will cut through the plane like a hot knife through butter.
And I don't think anchoring structure is going to be any less resilient, since, you know, should something(like stray meteorite) sever the cable at the top, the entirety of cable is going to fall down, and that's a hell of a ballistic impact.

[Sigfrial]

I hope I'm alive to see this come to fruition.

Imagine being able to build ships in orbit that wouldn't be feasible to launch from the surface. Or large stations where people can live comfortably, with fairly easy trips back and forth from the surface.

It's a great time to be alive.

[catbarf]

[QUOTE=FunnyBunny;46053846]Sorry. I don't mean to be a buzzkill. It's just frustrating seeing post after post of people going "It can't be done because of <reason>". 90% of the time, had they done even the tiniest amount of research (like reading the wikipedia page), they would realize that they are wrong. [/QUOTE]

On the contrary, I think the people who do the 'tiniest amount of research', like talking to actual engineers instead of reading optimistic speculation on Wikipedia, find that the core technologies needed to build a space elevator are largely theoretical and would require some major advances in research to be feasible- let alone practical, because so much of the science behind space elevators is conjecture, especially regarding vibration and gravitational fluctuations, not to mention requiring an enormous support network already in place to prevent something like one of the hundreds of thousands of sizable chunks of debris in equatorial orbit from wiping out a cable.

When modern engineers call fifty years optimistic, that's not saying that the technology's all there, the details are worked out, and we just need to wait for some nebulous reason- it's saying that we have no idea how to solve this enormously complicated problem, but there's the possibility that some unforeseen technological development will make it feasible within that timeframe. There's a lot of misinformation about space elevators, but the idea that engineers have worked it all out already (as opposed to having theoretical, conditional, potential solutions) is every bit as false as the idea that it'll never be possible.

[GoldenDragon]

I hope they decide to build the first one in Mombasa.

[CuppethCake]

[QUOTE=LMB10;46054678]That's cool and all... But would look fucking ugly.[/QUOTE]

I agree, we should just scrap the entire project and fire everyone who thought of it, those morons, building a world wonder that looks [I]ugly[/I]. Unacceptable.

[GoldenDragon]

The fact that it'll make bringing up cargo into space much cheaper than it is currently outweighs how ugly it might be to some people imo, those people can shove it.