From: nebusj-@-rpi-.edu   
      
   	I'm sorry that more urgent issues have been keeping me from   
   posting regularly but on the bright side I have 145 pages done of a   
   second textbook that will hopefully make my plumage more interesting   
   to potential employers.   
      
   	I want to give credit to whoever it was thought to book Brian   
   Turner, the guest from a week or two ago working on the Space Elevator   
   concept.  That's the sort of creative and imaginative guest booking   
   that marked, well, the early years when they couldn't get real guests   
   or the strike shows when, well, they couldn't get real guests.   
      
   	But the Space Elevator is a fasinating concept, and one of the   
   handful of space-enthusiast ideas to not be completely nuts.  Bringing   
   someone on to talk about it made for an interesting segment and even a   
   bit of public service, as the communicating of novel science and   
   technology ideas to the public is.   
      
      
   	I do like the Space Elevator, although I'm not unquestioningly   
   in love with it: while it's true that building such an elevator would   
   allow a great lowering in prices for launching things into space, it's   
   not clear that it does better than rockets would if the sort of money   
   Space Elevators require for development were invested in improving the   
   operational characteristics of rockets.  (There's not enough work done   
   in improving the behavior and handling of rockets.)   
      
   	Conan had a lot of fun with the idea of this long rope,   
   essentially, but it's worth pointing out the basic idea of a really   
   long tether that reaches to geosynchronous orbit isn't by itself   
   ridiculous.  Humanity has been building cables thousands of miles   
   long since the 1850s, and building one that goes out to 20,000   
   miles is ... longer than has been done, but not so much longer that   
   *that's* the problem.   
      
   	The real problem is making a cable lightweight and strong   
   enough for the task.  While a couple materials with the right weight   
   and strength characteristics exist, there aren't yet ways known to   
   make cables of those materials *nearly* long enough.   
      
   	It would've helped the segment had Turner remembered to show   
   the Earth-and-string demonstration right away, though.   
      
   	(Mystery Science Theater 3000 introduced the idea in its sixth   
   season as the Umbilicus/Umbilicon/Umbiliport/et cetera, although may   
   have thought they were just being silly.  There was also an episode   
   where Mike climbs down an enormously long rope ladder, although he ends   
   up in Castle Forrester in the middle of breakfast and scurries back up.)   
      
   --   
   								Joseph Nebus   
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)