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Submitted via IRC for SoyCow2718
Fans of sci-fi and fringe tech may already be familiar with the idea of the "space elevator," which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like — and totally impossible with today's technology. But a pair of scientists think they've found an alternative: a Moon elevator. And it's slightly less insane... technically.
The idea of the space elevator, first explored in detail by Arthur C. Clarke in his novel "The Fountains of Paradise," is essentially a tower so tall it reaches space. Instead of launching ships and materials from the surface of the Earth to orbit, you just put them in the elevator of this tower and when they reach the top, somewhere about 26,000 miles up in geosynchronous orbit, they're already beyond gravity's pull, for all intents and purposes.
It's a fun idea, but the simple fact is that this tower would need to be so strong to support its own weight, and that of the counterweight at the far end, that no known material or even reasonably hypothetical one will do it. Not by a long shot. So the space elevator has remained well on the "fiction" side of science fiction since its first proposal. Hasn't stopped people from patenting it, though.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/12/scientists-propose-spaceline-elevator-to-the-moon/
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 15 2019, @06:16AM (1 child)
essentially a tower so tall it reaches space.
Uhhh, no it isn't. It's far more of a ski lift than it is a tower, and the physics involved are quite different. 11 comments on that page, and the first one addresses the little issue of the author's failure to comprehend what the elevator is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 15 2019, @10:25AM
Or you know, SPACE ELEVATOR is a phrase people like to use.