{"id":1378,"date":"2010-03-16T01:22:05","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T07:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1378"},"modified":"2010-03-16T01:22:05","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T07:22:05","slug":"a-skeptical-view-of-earth-based-space-elevators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1378","title":{"rendered":"A skeptical view of earth-based Space Elevators&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve read several books by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidbrin.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">David Brin<\/a> and enjoyed them all.\u00a0 This is the first time, however, I&#8217;ve seen a David Brin video (albeit a YouTube version).<\/p>\n<p>He talks about future technologies, Space Shuttle fuel tanks representing a lost opportunity, tethers, solar sails and, briefly, Space Elevators.\u00a0 He&#8217;s a skeptic of the idea of an Earth-based Space Elevator (calling it a &#8216;far out what if&#8217;) but is more positive about putting one on Mars.<\/p>\n<p>[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sG_xGzpSOfA[\/youtube]<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Some small nits;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In his discussion of solar sails, he says that no one has tried to do this.\u00a0 However, the Planetary Society has tried once &#8211; and failed &#8211; and is getting ready to try again.<\/li>\n<li>He gives the impression that the taper on a space elevator has to continue increasing from the ground all the way out to the counterweight.\u00a0 If my understanding is correct, it only has to grow to GEO &#8211; from there the tether width can remain constant or even decrease.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve read several books by David Brin and enjoyed them all.\u00a0 This is the first time, however, I&#8217;ve seen a David Brin video (albeit a YouTube version). He talks about future technologies, Space Shuttle fuel tanks representing a lost opportunity, tethers, solar sails and, briefly, Space Elevators.\u00a0 He&#8217;s a skeptic of the idea of an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378","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=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}