{"id":267,"date":"2006-06-05T02:10:13","date_gmt":"2006-06-05T07:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=267"},"modified":"2006-06-05T02:10:13","modified_gmt":"2006-06-05T07:10:13","slug":"dr-gregory-benford-space-elevator-skeptic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=267","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Gregory Benford – Space Elevator Skeptic"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was at the Skeptics Conference<\/a> this past weekend – the subject was Global Warming.\u00a0 One of the presenters was Dr. Gregory Benford<\/a> (Physicist and\u00a0prolific SF writer)\u00a0and his topic was “things that we could DO to solve the Global Warming problem.”<\/p>\n

During his talk, he dismissed fusion as a “solution that is 50 years off and always will be.”\u00a0 Another\u00a0possibility\u00a0he mentioned,\u00a0but dismissed as being too expensive, was space-based, solar power panels.\u00a0 During the Q&A period after his presentation, I asked him why\u00a0the solar power solution was too expensive – was it the lift cost to get the hardware into orbit or was it the cost of the hardware itself?\u00a0 He replied that it was the lift cost.\u00a0 I then asked him that if there was a much cheaper way to get this stuff up to orbit, would that\u00a0change the equation; i.e., would this be now a viable solution – he readily agreed.\u00a0 I\u00a0asked him what he thought about the idea of\u00a0a Space Elevator.\u00a0 He replied that it would be developed\u00a0“after fusion power”, getting a nice laugh from the audience.\u00a0 Sigh.<\/p>\n

After his presentation, I\u00a0spoke to him and asked\u00a0what he specifically thought was unrealistic about the possibility of a Space Elevator.\u00a0 He replied that it was “tension”\u00a0and “stability”, but did acknowledge that some work was being done with “carbon fibers.”\u00a0 I didn’t have a chance to speak with him anymore – people wanted to talk to him about his solution to global warming and I didn’t want to monopolize his time with my pet subject.<\/p>\n

Dr. Benford is a physicist and I respect him tremendously.\u00a0 He has a reputation for thinking outside the box and I was disappointed in his dismissal of the Space Elevator idea.\u00a0 On the plane ride back (the conference was in Pasadena, California and I live near Chicago) I\u00a0spent some time thinking about what to do about this.\u00a0 I think what I’ll do is send him a copy of Dr. Edwards book and the new LiftPort book.\u00a0 I have no idea if he’ll look at them or not, but I think it’s worth a shot…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was at the Skeptics Conference this past weekend – the subject was Global Warming.\u00a0 One of the presenters was Dr. Gregory Benford (Physicist and\u00a0prolific SF writer)\u00a0and his topic was “things that we could DO to solve the Global Warming problem.” During his talk, he dismissed fusion as a “solution that is 50 years off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","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=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}