I just ran across this interesting thread, discussing the possibilty (or not) of a Space Elevator. One of the contributors, an “nhughes1” (who states that he is a long-time Aerospace Engineer) declares that a Space Elevator is flatly impossible. The last post on the thread is nearly 9 months old.
I’m not a Physics major, so I can’t comment on his calculations. I wish I knew his email address – I’d refer him to the Edwards / Westling book and ask him for his comments.
The concept of the space elevator was misexplained to him on the website. I’m sure he’s quite capable of working this out, however it was described as having a center of gravity(the wrong term here, but regardless) at GEO. This is not true. It must be ABOVE geo. How much above is in question, but he adds quite a bit to the problem to deal with this. This was pointed out to him, and he corrected it now, with the oversite that anguler momentum can be drawn from the earth. This was ALSO pointed out to him. He then points out that a rigid structure cannot support anguler transfer, and is correct, but is unaware that we want to use a non-rigid CNT ribbon, which is not effected by this objection. He then bad mouths the math in a NASA report, and provides his own figures. They are incorrect, as both another poster, and my own calculations show. Incidently, I *AM* a physics major. Hey mysteriously stops commenting at that point.
Maybe you scared him off (or maybe he just got bored). Thank you for defending the concept from a feasability standpoint.