Though not directly applicable to the Space Elevator, this Planetary Society article does have relevance because of the future plans for SpaceX.  One of their future models, the Falcon 9 Heavy, is to be designed to hoist 62,500 pounds to LEO and 27,400 pounds to GTO (Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit).

Dr. Edwards projects that the initial Space Elevator configuration will weigh about 80 tons, so that puts this well into range of just a few Falcon 9 Heavy lifts.

If SpaceX can pull this off, this would make it the second private company (in addition to Zenit) to be able to boost these heavy payloads into orbit.

By now, I’m sure many of you have heard the rumors that NASA is planning on cutting off funding for NIAC, NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts.  This is the agency that has funded, among other things, Dr. Brad Edwards groundbreaking research into designing a practical Space Elevator.

There’s still nothing official, but, as several stories about this proposed cut have appeared on NIAC’s website (without refutation), it sure doesn’t look good.

Several others have posted on this, among them NASA Watch and The Guardian.  In addition, the Space Elevator Journal’s Patrick Boake contacted Dr. Edwards for his comments – they are on the Space Elevator Journal posting covering this story…

Eating your “seed corn” is never a good idea.  I’m just glad it’s happened after Dr. Edwards had completed the studies that NIAC funded and not before…

You can find links to the Edwards-NIAC reports on this blog’s sidebar, under Reference Sites.

Bert, from the NSS Space Elevator Special Interest Chapter has found the earliest web-mention I know of for a Space Elevator, this from June of 1991.  You can find it here.

The earliest one I knew of before this was from April of 1995.