Sander Olson of the Next Big Future kindly emailed me to let me know that his recent interview with Dr. Brad Edwards has now been posted at their website.
Most interesting quote (IMHO) from the interview:
Small quantities of some nanotubes have been made that are sufficiently strong to be used in a space elevator. We would obviously need to produce hundreds of tons of such nanotubes to build a space elevator. With sufficient funding, we could create a nanotube-based material appropriate for a space elevator within a couple of years.
That certainly sounds overly-optimistic to me, but who am I to argue with Dr. Edwards?
Anyway, it’s always interesting to get the current thoughts of Dr. Edwards and I recommend that you check out the interview.
I sure hope he’s right about the timeframe we need to get moving on this stuff!
I have a couple questions about carbon nanotube tethers:
Carbon nanotubes are supposed to be good conductors – has anyone looked into how they can be used to transmit electric power to lifters, rather than beam the energy to them?
Tethers have been experimented with in space as a way to get power. I’d imagine a tether all the way to space could generate a tremendous amout of electricity, has this been researched?
Do you know what has happened to Dr. Edwards? It seems like he championed the cause back in 2006-2007, but other than this interview you posted I can’t find much information on him. Also, the company mentioned in this interview no longer exists, as far as I can tell.
Dr. Edwards seems to have dropped out of the “Space Elevator arena” as far as I know, and I don’t believe there is anything going on with that company.
It’s a shame – we miss him…