SoylentNews
SoylentNews is people
https://soylentnews.org/

Title    Japanese Construction Firm Plans to have a Space Elevator Up and Running by 2050
Date    Monday September 22 2014, @03:43PM
Author    martyb
Topic   
from the reach-for-the-sky-and-beyond dept.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/09/22/1216238

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

Once the realm of science fiction, a Japanese company has announced they will have a space elevator up and running by the year 2050.

If successful it would revolutionise space travel and potentially transform the global economy.

The Japanese construction giant Obayashi says they will build a space elevator that will reach 96,000 kilometres [~60,000 miles] into space.

The company said the fantasy can now become a reality because of the development of carbon nanotechnology.

"The tensile strength is almost a hundred times stronger than steel cable so it's possible," Mr Yoji Ishikawa, a research and development manager at Obayashi, said.

"Right now we can't make the cable long enough. We can only make 3-centimetre-long nanotubes but we need much more... we think by 2030 we'll be able to do it."

Universities all over Japan have been working on the problems and every year they hold competitions to share and learn from each other.

What say you Soylents? After years of speculation, are we finally at a point where this has become an engineering problem of implementation? Is this just wide-eyed public-relations posturing? Given the gravity well of the earth is much greater than that of the moon or Mars, might they be a better starting point for implementation? What do you see as the greatest challenges blocking the construction of a space elevator?

Other non-rocket spacelaunch systems have been proposed: Launch Loop, Lightcraft, Space gun, and Strar Tram among others. Do one of these hold a brighter promise for getting things into orbit or even off this planet?

Links

  1. "AndyTheAbsurd" - https://soylentnews.org/~AndyTheAbsurd/
  2. "Japanese company has announced" - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-21/japanese-construction-giants-promise-space-elevator-by-2050/5756206
  3. "space elevator" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
  4. "non-rocket spacelaunch" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch
  5. "Launch Loop" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop
  6. "Lightcraft" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightcraft
  7. "Space gun" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun
  8. "Strar Tram" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTram

© Copyright 2024 - SoylentNews, All Rights Reserved

printed from SoylentNews, Japanese Construction Firm Plans to have a Space Elevator Up and Running by 2050 on 2024-03-28 11:39:20