They can't even make a building a mile high, I'm pretty sure that the chances of a structure tall enough to reach outer space without collapsing will never happen in my life, my children's life, or their children's life.
I'm guessing that the joke is on those who are donating...
It's not a buillding, its a space station anchored on a cable between a base station, and some form of counterweight in a geostationary orbit. The technology is in development and believed to be not far off, and as I mentioned earlier construction is already physically possible in a lower gravity environment (just not feasible untill we build one here first).
There is one hickup with a lunar elevator, and that is that due to the slow speed at which the moon rotates a geostationary orbit is something like 144,000 kilometers above the surface, so the cable would have to be astronomically long. However due to lower gravity, construction is already possible with existing materials, I believe a steel/kevlar composite has been proposed and is already in use for other applications.
Well, $62000 of funding for a multi-multi-billion dollar project is definitely a joke. Yeah, let's crowd source funding for what would be the most complex civil engineering exercise in man's history, decades before we have need. Sweet. Great use of funding and man hours.
Did you read the kickstarter? Baby steps, the current technology they are working on will allow them to deploy kilometer high observation and communication towers in a matter of hours, and they are planning to use them for disaster relief, search and rescue, etc.
They have many technologies which are beneficial on their own which they plan to work on in the interim, and to be honest I'm pretty impressed about how they have structured it. Better organised that I was expecting, it's not just "Give us money to help build a space elevator", that's unrealistic, instead they are working on technologies that have independent purposes, but that will in turn benefit the development of a space elevator even if they are not the ones to build it.
I agree that a space elevator would be a huge step forward.
However, technologically, it is NOT feasible. Why?
The material strength-to-weight ratio that would be required is roughly 100 times greater than any presently known material on our planet. Nanotubes of boron nitride gets a little closer, but still far far short.
As far as I know, carbon nanotubes are plenty strong enough and the progress that has been made with them in recent years is looking very promising. They also have the added advantage of been able to be constructed as a conductor, allowing the tether itself to actually power the device, or at the very least transfer electricity to and from the space based landing station.
The Lifters will creep at very low speeds - it might take hours for them to make the ascent.
With the fastest lifters that have been developed so far, you'd be looking at around 30 hours transit time I believe. Seems slow, but we're talking about travelling literally thousands of kilometers, days worth of driving straight up.
I'm not 100% sure on all these figures, just going from memory. I'll have to dig through my old Uni assignments and see if I can find the report I did, it'd be a couple of years out of date by now though.
If you look up the list of downstream technology that came from the Apollo program, the list contains mostly items that fell out of favor to concurrently-produced items (Monsanto's Durette vs. DuPont's Nomex, for example), items we don't actually use, and then a few things that are useful.
The only one in the entire list that I use on a regular basis is a cordless drill. The tech didn't come from the Apollo program (it already existed), but companies made a push afterward to produce it commercially.
That's it.
It's worth not overestimating the utility of a particular program. The Apollo had considerably more importance culturally and scientifically for it's own merit rather than for the day-to-day impact it had on a person's life.
Inventions and innovations from the space program have made a huge difference in society, not just the Apollo program specifically, but all space exploration done in general. Aside from the obvious ones (GPS, Mobile phones, etc.) there are the spinoffs, CAT scans (and MRI's), Freeze Dried Food, Lubricants, insulation materials, water filtration systems. The space program in general has pushed human science and innovation forward in a way that only one other thing has been able to in my opinion, War, and in this case, nobody gets blown up (not intentionally at least
).
Although I'll admit a fair percentage of these were due to the cold war, so I guess war still trumps unified space exploration in a couple of ways
Technology is important when it is needed, but a silly luxury when it isn't. At this level of cost and grandiosity, it just isn't important enough to warrant worldwide interest.
What's more important? Obviously everybody has their priorities, and I have to say I'd like to see the world fed and clothed first, but the space elevator is up there in my opinion. Some day we're gonna leave this rock because we want to or because we have to, and I believe that the space elevator is the tool to do it. Unless we come up with some sort of crazy efficient propulsion system or figure out how to manipulate gravity.
Edit- For the record, I have no affiliation with the project or Kickstarter, and haven't donated yet. I probably will though, I've intermittently checked on LiftPorts progress a few times over the past few years and its good to see them going somewhere.
