Scraping the sky

Over at E’S FLAT, AH’S FLAT TOO, Rahul relates how Professor Mark Welland, FRS, considers the idea of Space Elevator to be nonsense; “any undergraduate physics student could tell you why it was nonsense and this sort of irresponsible hype in the press had done great damage to nanoscience.”

I googled Dr. Welland, and he certainly does seem to have a lot of credentials.  I am going to attempt to contact Dr. Welland and ask him why the idea of a Space Elevator is “nonsense.”