{"id":1104,"date":"2008-10-25T01:14:05","date_gmt":"2008-10-25T06:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2008-10-25T01:14:05","modified_gmt":"2008-10-25T06:14:05","slug":"more-space-elevator-news-catch-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1104","title":{"rendered":"More Space Elevator news catch-up…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing from the last post, here are a few more odds ‘n ends relating to the Space Elevator which have occurred lately…<\/p>\n

And what is this, you might ask?\u00a0 It’s how you write “Space Elevator” in Armenian.\u00a0 At the July Space Elevator conference<\/a> in Redmond, I had the pleasure to meet Karen Ghazaryan.\u00a0 He gave a talk on Sunday\u00a0entitled; “Stability of Superconducting Cable Used for Transportation of Electrical Current from Space<\/em>“.\u00a0 In the lunch period afterwards, I chatted with him and took the opportunity to ask him to add Armenian to my Translation Project<\/a>.\u00a0 He graciously consented and now we have it.\u00a0 Oh, by the way, the pronunciation is “Tiyezerakan Verelak”.\u00a0 Thank you Karen!<\/p>\n

<\/a>The Space Elevator skeptics are\u00a0having their say…\u00a0 Recently I linked to an article<\/a> on Discovery\u00a0Space from Spaceward<\/a>‘s Ben Shelef, discussing benefits that a Space Elevator will bring.\u00a0 Discovery Tech has now posted an ‘opposing viewpoint’ <\/a>from Italian professor Nicola M. Pugno<\/a>.\u00a0 His objection is that inherent defects in carbon nanotubes will prevent it from ever being strong enough to create a Space Elevator tether (he’s weighed in on this before<\/a>).\u00a0 But he’s not an opponent of the idea\u00a0as he says that his team has come up with a plan to build a ‘flaw-tolerant’ tether.\u00a0 Professor Pugno is my kind of skeptic – find an objection and then find a way to overcome it<\/u>.<\/p>\n

Here is a posting from another skeptic,\u00a0tech-archive.net (‘Space Elevator’ idea almost as stupid as the ISS<\/a><\/em>), in which\u00a0the author\u00a0gives no reasons it won’t work – just quotes one of the of the articles which came out of “Japan is building a Space Elevator craze” and says that we need to restart Project Orion if we really want to get to space.\u00a0 And in the same vein, here’s a skeptic<\/a>\u00a0who argued that a Laser powered climber isn’t practical, only to then have a REAL laser expert (Dr. Jordin Kare – a member of the Lasermotive<\/a> team, among other distinctions) disagree.\u00a0 Dr. Kare’s money quote: “There are certainly reasons to be skeptical about space elevators, but the laser power transmission system really isn’t one<\/em>.”\u00a0 Read the whole exchange and make up your own mind.\u00a0 I don’t mind skeptics, I just mind those who haven’t bothered to do their homework.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Dr. Kare, he was recently a speaker at the Space Solar Power conference in Florida.\u00a0 Some of his remarks were captured<\/a>\u00a0(by blogger Transterrestial Musings) along with other, relevant, power-beaming comments.<\/p>\n

And for our final “skeptic” note,\u00a0here’s someone<\/a> who is not a skeptic that Space Elevator can be built, but is afraid that it won’t be we Americans who do it.\u00a0 I hope he’s wrong – he might not be.<\/p>\n

<\/a>I’ve already talked about the swell of publicity that surrounded the Online Times story about the Japanese “building a space elevator’, but one more article<\/a>, this one from the Russian media, is worth noting.\u00a0 The author, Yuri Zaitsev, talks about the Space Elevator, in general, (and notes that it’s a Russian invention) and he also talks about tether experiments in space – which I found interesting.\u00a0 I love to hear what the Russians have to say about the Space Elevator.\u00a0 In\u00a0some ways, their space program equals or exceeds ours.\u00a0 They have everything they need to build a Space Elevator (except the tether, of course, which we’re all waiting on).\u00a0 I’ve previously posted about the ‘Russian perspective’ (here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>) which is very valuable, of course,\u00a0but who\u00a0can forget the travesty that they visited<\/a> on Madonna…<\/p>\n

<\/a>And, moving from Madonna to Dr. Bryan Laubscher, Bryan recently gave a talk<\/a> at the Bellevue Community College about the promise and challenges of building a Space Elevator.\u00a0 Let’s hope that he has inspired at least one or two people to join this effort.<\/p>\n

Finally, here’s an article<\/a> from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.com asking the public which of five proposals would they support for a ‘destination center’ (a Canadian euphemism, I think, for ‘tourist stop’).\u00a0 One of the possibilities is; “Innovation showcase: U of S is interested in partnering with the museum and creativity centre in one connected space. The university is looking at showcasing the innovative projects students create, such as components for the space elevator, for example<\/em>.”\u00a0 ‘U of S’ is, I’m sure, the University of Saskatchewan and THAT means the USST team<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And that nearly catches us up.\u00a0 My next post will have some cool new space-elevator graphics that I’ve found – along with a few other bits and pieces that have showed up in my search engines…<\/p>\n

(Picture of Madonna from here<\/a>.\u00a0 Picture of Dr. Laubscher from here<\/a>.\u00a0 Picture of Professor Pugno from here<\/a>.\u00a0 Click on any of them for a larger version.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continuing from the last post, here are a few more odds ‘n ends relating to the Space Elevator which have occurred lately… And what is this, you might ask?\u00a0 It’s how you write “Space Elevator” in Armenian.\u00a0 At the July Space Elevator conference in Redmond, I had the pleasure to meet Karen Ghazaryan.\u00a0 He gave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-news-announcements","category-translation-project"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}